Re: dist-upgrade from potato to woody

[joost@topaz.mdcc.cx (Joost Kooij)]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2001 at 09:17:27PM +0100, Graham Ward wrote:
> I just tried to upgrade my system from potato to woody.  I believe
> these are the correct steps:
> 
>   (1) replace "potato" with "woody" everywhere in /etc/apt/sources.list
> 
>   (2) apt-get update
> 
>   (3) apt-get dist-upgrade.
> 
> When I do step (3), I see (among other things) the message
> 
>     WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
>     This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
>       sysvinit util-linux (due to sysvinit) 
>     544 packages upgraded, 87 newly installed, 36 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
>     Need to get 348MB of archives. After unpacking 173MB will be used.
>     You are about to do something potentially harmful
> 
> On the face of it, removing sysvinit looks like a bad idea, so I
> stopped at this point.  Has something gone horribly wrong with my
> set-up, or is this in fact harmless?

If you go ahead you system will most likely be hosed.  Why aren't you 
using dselect?  Both the dpkg and apt-get manual suggest you use dselect
as a frontend to manage the package selections.  For complex operations
like distribution upgrades, you should really always use dselect.

Here's what I would do in your current situation, I've added step (-1)
to get your system back to its initial state:

  (-1) reset the available database to stable: place back "potato" 
      everywhere in /etc/apt/sources.list and run:
        dpkg --clear-avail

  (0) prepare for the upgrade by running:
        dselect update select
      in the select screen, verify that you have no current unresolved
      dependencies and that your package selections are sane, eg all
      packages marked for installation are installed and at their latest
      versions.

  (1) replace "potato" with "woody" everywhere in /etc/apt/sources.list

  (2) update available list and verify the new dependencies by running:
        dselect update select
      In the selections screen, don't add new packages yourself, just
      press enter and let dselect ponder on the current selections.
      As there have been some replacements in packages and some changed
      dependencies between packages, dselect will prompt you with a list
      of packages involved in an unresolved dependency.  Investigate the
      suggestions by dselect and accept these if reasonable.

  (3) download and install upgraded packages by running:
        dselect install

Most dselect operations can also be done from the dselect main menu, 
which can be started by running dselect without command line arguments.

Cheers,


Joost