Re: updating with aptitude

[Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com>]

Christopher Nelson <chris@cavein.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 09:32:38PM +0000, lostson wrote:
> > Hello 
> >  I have a laptop and a desktop machine running sarge. I would like to
> > update them to etch. I am thinking I have heard I can do this with
> > aptitude, is this possible and if so anyone got a links to a good doc?
> > Or can I jsut use my sources list from this machine on the other 2 and
> > do a apt-get update then apt-get upgrade ? Thanks.
> 
> It is possible, just edit '/etc/apt/sources.list' in your favourite
> editor and replace all occurances of "stable" or "sarge" with either
> "testing" (if you want to stay with newer stuff after etch is released)
> or "etch" (if you want to use etch once it becomes 'stable').  Then a
> simple 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get dist-upgrade' (mind the dist-) will
> update.  Watch your updating however, there have been some changes since
> sarge, like xfree86 -> xorg, so prepare to reinstall some packages and
> deal with some brokenness.

On my sid system there are still packages from stable and testing,
though I do a dist-upgrade at least every week. This is why I consider
it best to keep sources also for stable and testing and just change
your default release in apt.conf

For the OP: This means you should just copy the line with 'stable'
and replace 'stable' with 'testing'. You will also need to create the
file /etc/apt/apt.conf to contain the following line:

APT::Default-Release "testing";

After that, just do 'aptitude update', 'aptitude dist-upgrade' and
cross your fingers.

Regards
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)