> Thanks you all for your replies.
>
> It sounds like I should stick to stable for now at least (till I
get more confident about what I'm doing).
>
> The package I'm most concerned about upgrading is the kernel. I
built this from the sources at kernel.org and used a Debian tool
(can't remember the name now) to make a .deb file from it and
installed ith with dpkg I think.
>
> Will doing 'apt-get upgrade' or 'apt-get dist-upgrade' install the
default kernel? Will it leave mine in the GRUB menu at least? I'd
like to make sure that apt-get doesn't overwrite the kernel with the
standard prebuilt one - I presume mine will still be in the GRUB menu
at least.
>
> Thanks,
> Yasir
>
I recommend using aptitude instead of apt-get, ie. just replace
apt-get update by aptitude dist-upgrade. aptitude is said to be
better at resolving conflicts and recommendations.
Apart from that it might be worthwhile to read the upgrade
instructions from woody to sarge as they might apply to some of your
packages:
http://www.de.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#s-upgradingpackages
aptitude updates existing software, but doesn't remove any software,
ie. your kernel will stay. If you installed it via the debian tools,
ie. via a .deb package it will be found in the 'Obsolete and locally
created packages' section in aptitude.
You can later install a new kernel or compile a new kernel, but as
said in the release info, I strongly recommend to do this in a
separate step: use your existing kernel to see if everything works
fine; then add an additional kernel. If it continues to work fine,
you can remove the old kernel.
Thank you to everyone for replying.
I followed the advice given by Johannes and did aptitude dist-upgrade
using
http://www.us.debian.org/releases/sarge/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html
Most things installed ok, but it gave me an error which I'll list below:
<...clip up to this point>
Setting up abiword-common (2.2.7-3sarge2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386
kernel-pcmcia-modules-2.4.27-2-386
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Ack! Something bad happened while installing packages. Trying to
recover:
Setting up kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386 (2.4.27-10) ...
/usr/sbin/mkinitrd: device /dev/hda7 is not a block device
Failed to create initrd image.
dpkg: error processing kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386 (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 9
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of
kernel-pcmcia-modules-2.4.27-2-386:
kernel-pcmcia-modules-2.4.27-2-386 depends on
kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386; however:
Package kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing kernel-pcmcia-modules-2.4.27-2-386 (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386
kernel-pcmcia-modules-2.4.27-2-386
Reading Package Lists... 0% Reading Package Lists... 0%
Reading Package Lists... 6% Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... 0%
Building Dependency Tree... 0% Building Dependency Tree... 50%
Building Dependency Tree... 50% Building Dependency Tree Reading
extended state information... 0%
Reading extended state information... 0% Reading extended state
information... 3% Reading extended state information... 63% Reading
extended state information Initializing package states... 0%
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... 0% Reading task descriptions... 2%
Reading task descriptions... Done
I should say that I originally installed kernel 2.4.x (because it
wouldn't boot up when I installed 2.6.x from the Sarge installer) but
then I installed 2.6.x myself later, building it myself using
make-kpkg. One of the things that changed was that the drive names - I
think it might be because of SATA drivers? So for example, /dev/hda
became /dev/sda. However, my fstab file still uses hda for some
partitions (and still works somehow):
$ cat fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro
0 1
/dev/hda6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sda2 /mnt/c ntfs ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/e vfat rw,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
From above, you can see the / partition is still /dev/hda7 in fstab,
even though it should be /dev/sha7.
Should I just change all /dev/hda to /dev/sda and run aptitude
dist-upgrade again? Will that fix the problem?