Re: Issues dist-upgrading Etch to Lenny - 1 week old
David Fox wrote:
> Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> >Again I recommend you remove libgphoto2 and the stuff that depends
> >on it. You can always reinstall it later. Then you can complete
> >your upgrade.
Seems reasonable to me too. Once committed to testing just push
forward into it.
> Well, If I try that, I get output that removing libgphoto2-2 wants
> to remove digikam (which I use) kamera, kde, and a slew of other
> things. I know kde is just a metapackage and I can install it
> later. Maybe that is what I'll do after I get a number of other
> tasks done first and can manage to get out of X, since removing KDE
> whilst using it is like pulling out the rug from under oneself :).
This will probably be true. Previously when using a kde.org version
of KDE on Woody I simply removed all of kde from the system in order
to upgrade from Woody to Sarge. Then once back in a known state on
released Sarge stable I installed all of the KDE components again.
But trying to upgrade through was perhaps possible but I never figured
out how.
> Actually, no I don't. But I can't remove kdvi because of the
> dependency on kdegraphics (which I use) and that further dependson
> KDE, so that wants to remove docbook-utils, jadetex, kde &
> kdegraphics.
I would not worry too much about whether you are using it or not. I
think I would second Andrews suggestion to simply remove anything that
causes trouble and to push forward. In theory all of this is
installable in the new testing track.
More interesting is how things have gotten into a strange mode.
Please check your /etc/apt/preferences. Is there something there that
might be causing trouble?
> >1. WHich desktop are you using? You've got gnome, kde and xfce
> >installed. If you use them all, great, but if not, you might remove
> >one or more to help clean up this situation. The fewer packages you
> >have to upgrade, the smoother things go.
Good advice. Everything can be installed again later.
> 2. You say you were running etch before, when it was in testing, but
> >when was this? When did you start running etch? The reason I ask is
> >etch had been very stable and usable for quite a while before the move
>
> I had run it since roughly November 2005, after migrating to debian
Hmm... In my mind Etch was released just this year in 2007. Testing
in 2005 almost a year earlier would look almost nothing like the
released Etch.
I know that today people like to refer to testing as Lenny, and it is
called Lenny officially. But it has not stabilized and won't for a
long time. Calling it Lenny today is not meaningful. Released Lenny
will be a meaningful description. But today it is just today's
version of testing.
> 3. How do you normally upgrade your system? In testing and unstable,
> >you should routinely be running dist-upgrades. There is a lot of
>
> I had mostly done aptitude update && aptitude upgrade, mostly once a
> week when I was running etch/testing. Once in a while doing a dist-upgrade
> helped something.
When sitting on a stable release and taking security upgrades only
then using 'upgrade' makes sense. But when living on testing or
unstable really only 'dist-upgrade' is appropriate in my opinion.
When sitting in a stable environment and only desiring security
upgrades then 'upgrade' enforces that the installed package list will
not change. Running 'dist-upgrade' there should be okay too. But an
accidental addition to the sources.list could potentially cause a big
thrash and so 'upgrade' is a nice safety feature. But in
testing/unstable package dependencies change every day. There running
'upgrade' is not sufficient. When dependencies are changing often
running 'dist-upgrade' is really the only way to proceed.
Bob
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