RE: etch upgrade problem
Andrei Popescu <mailto:andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote on Tuesday, April
10, 2007 10:35 AM -0500:
> "Seth Goodman" <sethg@goodmanassociates.com> wrote:
>
> > In another thread, someone suggested "dpkg-reconfigure udev" for
> > other hardware detection problems, so I tried it. That refuses to
> > run because it wants a more recent kernel.
>
> Missed this the first time. What kernel are you running and what
> version of udev? If you are still running the sarge kernel then you
> should upgrade (but read the release notes first).
Installing initrd-tools and then upgrading the kernel to 2.6.18 fixed
the mouse and vga detection problems with X, so gnome runs. I may
decide to do a clean install of etch when I find the time, but at least
I have a desktop.
Reading release notes is always an excellent idea, so we could safely
label this problem as PEBKAC. OTOH, my setup was within the envelope
for Debian stable, so the same will probably happen to other casual
users. I also suspect it's avoidable.
The setup that led to this upgrade problem was:
- Debian stable installed as desktop system plus server
- all package management done through Synaptic
- repositories pointed to stable, not Sarge
- Gnome screen saver active
When the Etch release appeared, Synaptic offered to upgrade all the
packages just as I expected after seeing the release announcement on the
list. What I also expected was that Synaptic would either
upgrade/install/remove packages in an appropriate order, or tell me that
it couldn't. After all, this was a transition from pure stable to pure
stable, nothing out of the ordinary. Instead, it apparently removed
some of the Sarge hardware detection packages and installed udev without
requiring a kernel upgrade. It also replaced X while X was running,
causing the (standard Gnome) screensaver to no longer recognize
passwords.
I am curious whether some debconf action, or dependencies in the deb
files, could have warned the user?
--
Seth Goodman
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