Re: Dangers of "stable" in sources.list
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Jan Sneep wrote:
[snip]
>> 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.
Funny, I recently had a similar situation and I could use the sarge CD
to install stable etch just fine. It would install the packages
(including the kernel) from the CD and just replace them once it updated
the package list over the net.
>> 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
Well I'm sure you didn't loose 'everything'. Maybe aptitude
'accidentially' removed more packages than you would have liked, but
instead of reinstalling from scratch you'd probably just have installed
the packages you want manually.
aptitude install xserver-xorg kde gnome whatever
> 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)
To be fair: as far as the proprietary OS that you seem to be using for
sending your mails to this list is concerned, it certainly does not even
have the capabilities to upgrade your system to the next release and it
won't keep track of all the software you have installed and it won't
check for security updates for all the software you have installed on
your system and it won't etc. etc. etc. , *but* it has the capabilities
to break your installation. And if it's broke there is *no* way to fix
it, except for a fresh install from scratch.
> I guess if we're taking votes ... cast my newbie vote for using the name
> rather than "stable" ...
As pointed out by Joey Hess it's been changed already.
Cheers,
Johannes
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