Re: Upgrade from Sarge to Etch

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

On Sun, Jul 02, 2006 at 10:55:47PM -0400, Felipe Sateler wrote:
> Derek wrote:
> 
> > etch and testing are the same thing,using testing instead of etch could
> > lead to a accidental upgrade.
> That upgrade is not accidental: normally, you want to track either stable,
> testing or unstable, you don't want to track the next release.


I have a server on which I want to run stable.  Unfortunately sarge
won'ty boot properly -- the hardware is too new.  So I run etch, 
and I specify it as etch, not as testing, so that when etch 
becomes stable, I *will* be tracking stable.

Unusual circumstance, but it shows there can be reasons for chooing 
to specify etch instead of testing.

Most of the machines on my lan track testing, though, and they call it 
testing, not etch.  They aren't interested in ever running stable.  But 
they do take turns in getting the routine upgrades that make them track 
etch.  If something breaks, I hold off with the others until I can fix 
it.

Maintaining stability is not the same as specifying "stable".  "stable" 
is na staircase -- with platforms of stability and huge jumps to the 
next platform now and then.

Bit I do run stable, to get stability.  When I do it, though,  I specify 
"sarge" or "woody" or whatever it is at the moment.  Then to do the 
upgrade, I copy the entire system into new partition(s), make sure both 
copies boot, and advance one of them to the new release. That way I have 
a fallback in case something goes wrong.  And something almost always 
does.  Even when the Debian upgrade path is adequately debugged (which 
is usual), there can be problems with running out of disk space, network 
outages, power failurs halfway through te upgrade,  and so on.

So, some measure of parallel operation to maintain stability.

For normal use, I recommend
  for stability, specify the release as "sarge" (right now, anyway)
  For gradual continual change, specify "testing"
  For helping debug the latest Debian stuff, specify "sid" or 
"unstable", (and possibly also "experimental"?)


-- hendrik