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Re: debian unstable, stable enough?



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On Friday 08 September 2006 17:32, Jordi Carrillo was heard to say:
> You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get
> into unstable?

Personally, I use the ~180MB CD version or CD#1 of whatever is Stable. 
I keep it to an absolute minimum, not downloading any packages off 
the net if I can help it. I've done it with the ~30MB "net install" 
image CD, which means you start off with a REALLY minimalist system. 
Don't plug in the network cable until the system works, just to be 
sure.

Then edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to the unstable 
archives, connect the network cable and do whatever it takes to get 
that working, and "# apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade". When I 
can I use the sources.list that I had before, which includes such 
non-Debian archives as "Debian Multimedia" for mplayer, etc. Another 
good reason to make sure to back up your /etc directory whenever you 
do a backup.

This will bring the system into unstable with an absolute minimum of 
prior baggage. Once it's working as Unstable, then I run dselect 
(don't scream, folks, I've used it since 1995 and am comfortable with 
it) to add those meta-packages and applications I know I want. Then, 
when it's ready to download and install 800 or so packages, I let it 
go ahead and go to sleep, wake up the next morning and start 
answering debconf questions. :^)

> Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after
> this transition if you have sth like
> deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
> your debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right?

Right. "Testing" means testing, no matter what the version name is. 
However, soon after releasing a "stable", "testing" can get very, 
very unstable (in the bad way) for months. I would change the pointer 
from "testing" to "etch" now, so that you don't go through that 
massive mess until you are ready to do so.

Unstable doesn't have that massive upheaval, because it's always at a 
low level of instability.

Curt-

- -- 
September 11th, 2001
The proudest day for gun control and central 
planning advocates in American history

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