RE: Dangers of "stable" in sources.list
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Sackville-West [mailto:andrew@farwestbilliards.com]
> Sent: May 3, 2007 10:44 AM
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Dangers of "stable" in sources.list
>
> mildly humorous to think someone could be *surprised* by a debian
> release ;-O.
Actually I was ... not sure if it was mentioned here on the list or not ?
The list produces hundreds of postings a day and while I try to read most of
them ... there are days when work gets so busy and then there are six or
seven hundred messages to scan ... and while I remember reading something
about Etch being released in April, I totally missed the actual event ...
and I assume the correspondig instructions on how to properly do an Upgrade
... :O(
>
> >
> > And ever since, I've wondered why the default sources.list
> specifies
> > "stable" instead of a specific distribution. It seems like
> a recipe for
> > disaster for an awful lot of people.
>
> just a guess, but maybe so that no matter when you install, that
> install disk will get you moving into stable. so you could use a
> really old installer and automatically move right up to stable with
> the next dist-upgrade.
>
I had a NetInstall CD of Sarge that I made in January and when I did the
update last week I lost everything. I found I couldn't use that CD it get
Etch installed. It would crap-out because it was trying to replace the
kernel from the CD with the one from the mirror and kaboom! No go.
> also, ISTM, that if you are paying attention at all, you'd notice when
> the change happened. If you do a regular dist-upgrade, there will
> suddenly be a pile of upgrades instead of the usual trickle. THat
> should be enough to cause one to review what is happening and hold off
> on an upgrade if its necessary.
>
Not really a, IMHO, very good way to make sure someone doesn't make the
mistake I made ... REALLY should have some check built in to ALL the various
methods one can use to do an update to FLAG that you are about to perform
and UPGRADE not just an UPDATE. I hadn't done an update since I installed
Sarge back in January, because I didn't know how. Read some of the posts to
this list that in effect said that Aptitude was the way to go, so read what
I though I needed from the user guide and it's "marketing" message confirmed
that Aptitude was the next-best-thing-to-sliced-bread as it would manage all
the dependancies automatically that with other methods you would have to do
manually. So I with great confidence told it to go and update everything for
me! Well as you know I lost everything. Had to get a new Etch NetInst CD and
start over again. The ONLY good side to this is that I'm getting pretty good
at running the NetInst CD and have almost all the prompts memorized ... :O)
I guess if we're taking votes ... cast my newbie vote for using the name
rather than "stable" ...
Cheers,
Jan
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