On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 04:40:19AM +0000, Digby Tarvin wrote: > I am trying to get up the courage to update my debian etch system > after a few months of neglecting to do so, but am dreading the thought of > some mishap leaving the system unusable. > > The system was installed back in April, and is on a Fujitsu P7120, and > aptitude produces quite a long list of things it wants to delete and > upgrade, so I want to be cautious about telling it to go ahead. > > The first thing that gives me cause for concern is that the output > resulting from a 'apt-get update' does not look very clean: > Get:1 http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch Release.gpg [189B] > Get:2 http://mirror.ox.ac.uk etch Release.gpg [378B] > Hit http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch Release > Hit http://mirror.ox.ac.uk etch Release > Err http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch Release > > Get:3 http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch Release [5560B] > Hit http://mirror.ox.ac.uk etch/main Packages > Ign http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch Release > Hit http://mirror.ox.ac.uk etch/main Sources > Hit http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch/main Packages > Get:4 http://security.debian.org etch/updates Release.gpg [189B] > Hit http://security.debian.org etch/updates Release > Hit http://security.debian.org etch/updates/main Packages > Hit http://security.debian.org etch/updates/main Sources > Fetched 5751B in 0s (7515B/s) > Reading package lists... Done > W: There are no public key available for the following key IDs: > A70DAF536070D3A1 > W: GPG error: http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch Release: The following signa > tures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 07 > DC563D1F41B907 > W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems I think Marillat is in the debian-archive-keyring now, just install that. [...] > > One other thing that I am unsure about is that aptitude reports a number > of packages being 'held back'. I havn't intentionally asked for this, > could it have occured automatically or have I unintentionally done > something when initially learning to use aptitude? Hugo is right, just fully backup the partition, if it will make you feel better. The 'held-back' refers to packages which have newer versions available but can't be installed because some dependency is not available. 'Dist-upgrade' is what you need to resolve some of these. You will at some point just have to "do it" and be prepared for the results. Personally, I've done many very large upgrades in sid with generally no problems. ymmv. Finally, if you aren't prepared to maintain the system properly to avoid these issues, maybe you shouldn't be running a more volatile set of packages like testing and focus on stable instead. no offense intended if so perceived. A
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