Ralph F. De Witt wrote:
Mental:Please forgive me jumping in here, I have just finished a Knoppix hard disk install, and need guideance in how to convert to unstable. The last time I tried I ended up with several version of hotplug and several essential files went missing, It was a horrible mess. But I need to move to unstable as there are several apps I need to run and they are only avalible there. So I was wondering if you could help me convert to unstable? Or point me to some good documentation/how-to's. Being brand-new to debian is not helping. I would have installed woody, but I was unable to get x working. Thanks for any help you can offer.
Ok, in no particular order here's the essentials of what I did. Keep in mind I've been using debian for.. a while. Several years, and I'm still learning. I also tend to brute force things, so I'm sure there are more elegant solutions. I'm by no means an expert an package management yet. I abuse having broadband and have no issues with purging all of kde/gnome/X11 and reinstalling if it fixes a weird dependency problem.
The first thing I did was backup my sources.list and my list of installed packages. Just make a backup copy of the sources.list. To store the list of installed packages on your system, just do:
dpkg --get-selections > selections.txtNext, I pruned down the actual sources.list to only the unstable entries as well as an entry for a couple things I wanted fetched from unofficial apt repositories. I also removed the apt-pinning that was going on.
Next I did an apt-get update followed by an apt-get dist-upgrade.Read whats on hold. See what is going to be removed. Proceeding WILL break things in the sort term, so read this whole email before giving this a try. :)
If, during the dist-upgrade dpkg bails out saying package X conflicts with package Y, I'll apt-get remove both (one could be testing, the other unstable). Same with dependency problems. The list of removed software in my case was minimal. After I can run apt-get dist-upgrade and I'm as up to date as possible, I'll tackle the missing packges. This usually takes several itterations of apt-get dist-upgrade ; apt-get -f install. Read the error messages, they pretty much tell you what to type.
During the upgrade some pieces probably broke. Some app I use all the time was purged (by me) because it was getting in the way. This is where the selections.txt comes in. I do:
dpkg --get-selections < selections.txt apt-get dselect-upgradeThat _should_ install all packages that were installed when you saved off the list in the first place. The only thing that wont be replaced are packages that aren't findable in your sources.list. I think libranet had one or 2 admin gui things I never used, so I didn't mind loosing them.
Just to be clear, I have a very destructive method. The upside is that apt keeps your system config files around, and your personal config files are safely in $HOME, so your settings for say.. mozilla will remain even if you apt-get remove it. The downside is that if I were on a dialup, I'd have to rethink things. So far I've done this twice. Besides the usual package FOO is temporarily uninstallable (sid gets like that sometimes) for a few days, no inherent problems with it. Dont bother runnig apt-get clean til you're done (or your /var size is too small for apt to cache all the debs), you'll probably need to uninstall/reinstall a couple apps several times.
All in all its not difficult so much as time consuming. Before I bother attempting this I usually wait for a sunday afternoon with crappy weather and no plans. Things take a while. Excuse the incoherency, I'm trying to work and write this at the same time. :)
-- Mental (Mental@NeverLight.com) "The Torah... The Gospels... The Koran... Each claimed as the infallible word of GOD. Misquoted, misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misapplied. Maybe that's why he doesn't do any more interviews." - sinfest.net CARPE NOCTEM, QUAM MINIMUM CREDULA POSTERO. GPG public key: http://www.neverlight.com/pas/Mental.asc
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