Steve Block wrote:
On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 09:01:23PM -0800, Marc Shapiro wrote:Nothing replaces, or conflicts with openoffice.org-debian-files (that I can see),
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ s/b openoffice.org-debian-menus
yet it is being removed. I'm not surprised that it is not mentioned (in apt-cache show) for any of the packages to be installed, since it was from the package that I dl'd directly from www.openoffice.org that I used to install v 2.0 previously. IOW it is not from a Debian package, at all.So, as near as I can tell, doing this dist-upgrade whould leave me without a mysql server, will remove my help for oo.o 1.1 while not providing any for oo.o 2.0 and will break the version 2.0 of oo.o that I currently have installed.Is this correct, or am I missing something here?The idea of the backports is not that you use them as a regular package repository for keeping your system up to date, but that you bring in certain packages that you know you want that aren't in stable. Say you are working on a web server and the new content system needs php5. You can use the backports packages to migrate (carefully) to php5. I would not recommend using it as a generic upgrade system.The mysql issues you saw were because backports provides mysql-common in the 5.0 range, which replaces the 4.1. This requires removing all the 4.1 mysql packages since they depend on that, but won't cause the 5.0 mysql packages to automatically be installed.My recommendation is to keep backports in your sources.list file, but add the following to /etc/apt/preferences:Package: * Pin: release a=sarge-backports Pin-Priority: 200This will keep all the packages in the backports repository at a lower priority (200) than the main sarge repositories (500). After that you can carefully install whichever backported packages you want to use. Sometimes that may involve manually tracking down issues. For example to upgrade mysql to 5.0 you now need to override the package priority on mysql-common to install the 5.0 version or the other mysql 5 packages will be broken. Using aptitude in curses mode makes this pretty easy.
I had not, actually, intended to do a complete upgrade. I did that only to see what was out there so I could determine what, if anything, to use from backports. The main thing that I was looking for was openoffice.org-2.0, since I currently have that installed (seperate from my 1.1.3 install) from the files obtained directly from www.openoffice.org. Someone else has posted that the missing help package can be safely obtained from Sid with no dependancy problems. That should work. My only remaining issue with oo.o, then, is that I would like to keep the 2.0 version that I have installed untill I am sure that the new one works, but openoffice.org-debian-menus, which came directly from www.openoffice.org along with the rest of the 2.0 files is going to be removed. Why? The debian package shouldn't know anything about it, so I would think that it would be left alone (along with all the rest of the 2.0 files from www.openoffice.org). WAIT A MINUTE -- apt-cache search says that it IS a debian package. Did openoffice.org just grab it from the debian archives and provide it along with their package? ALSO, apt-cache show says that it is for desktop integration. Is that for Gnome and KDE? I am using fvwm2 and do not use an integrated desktop environment. Do I even need that package?
MySQL 5.0 is also of interest. Why is it that the packages that I am interested in appear to be the only ones that would obviously break if I install them? I did not really undestand what should be done to correct that problem. I use apt-get, not aptitude and have never dealt with pinning, or priorities, before. I will probably just wait until Etch goes stable and I will get 5.0 then, unless something comes up to really require that I upgrade sooner.
-- Marc Shapiro