On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, John Hasler wrote:
Rhomboid Goatcabin writes:My sources.list files are using specifically "stable" and I'm wondering what happens when the Sarge big, red, shiny, candy-like button gets pressed. Do all my systems go and try to install Sarge?Yes. I suggest that you point them to Woody and then change them to Sarge and do 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade' one at a time after Sarge settles for a few weeks. If the first few go well you might then consider doing the rest in bulk. -- John Hasler
I'm in the process right now of upgrading about 80 machines from woody to sarge. I prefer to specifically name the Debian version (e.g. sarge) in my /etc/apt/source.list file instead of saying "stable" or "testing", etc., because, when sarge does go stable, the stable link will be changed to sarge in all the mirrors -- so one minute woody is stable and the next sarge is stable. There is no grace period as you suggest (at least there never was before).
If all your machines are very similar in terms of their hardware (harddisk type/size, video card, CPU), then I would suggest that you check out 'systemimager'. This is a fabulous tool to use to image a lot of machines from one 'master' machine and then install all the others very quickly and easily.