Re: Woody vs. Sarge vs. You've heard this before ;-)

[Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>]

On Wed, 2003-08-13 at 17:10, Aaron wrote:
> On -2406-Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 02:28:27PM -0600, Jacob Anawalt <jacob@cachevalley.com> spake thus,
> > I know your question was about Testing, and I answered with Unstable.
> > You can do the same thing to go to testing if you want, but I don't
> > reccomend it. Don't do testing unless you're just doing a package or two
> > mixed with stable until they do a freeze on testing. Just because a package
> > is in testing doesn't mean it's ready for use. You can search the archives
> > for more on this, but the basic idea I got from people is that unstable is
> > a better choice than testing if you want to try out the new packages.
> 
> I was under the impression that the progression from "most reliable"
> to "most chaotic" was Stable -> Testing -> Unstable. Is that not so?
> 
> I'm also wholeheartedly against doing any sort of distribution hybrid
> after reading horror stories of avalanching dependency problems
> branching from trying to install testing or unstable packages in a
> stable install and ending up with multiple major versions of libraries
> and things... I don't want to deal with that.

Aaron, I think you're being a bit too nervous about this.

If I had to reinstall my system, I'd do something similar to what 
Jacob suggested:
1. Install from the LordSutch ISO: http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/debian-cd/
   Only install a minimal system!!!
2. Edit sources.list to change stable to testing.
3. apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
4. Proceed with installing the rest of the packages I need.  Of
   course, I have a list of such packages, since I make regular
   backups, including a "COLUMNS=120 dpkg -l > package.lis" and
   scp it to another machine.
   Alternatively, if the backups are burned to CD, once the minimal
   Woody is installed, mount the CD and extract the list from the
   tarball.

Since my /etc will have also been backed up, I can also extract
config files from it.

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| Ron Johnson, Jr.        Home: ron.l.johnson@cox.net           |
| Jefferson, LA  USA                                            |
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| "Man, I'm pretty.  Hoo Hah!"                                  |
|    Johnny Bravo                                               |
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