Re: Lenny upgraded to Squeeze

[Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com>]

Bob Proulx wrote:
> Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> > ... then changed my sources to Squeeze, so I did aptitude update and
> > aptitude full-upgrade and basically I just let aptitude do it's
> > thing,
>
> Note that the recommend package management tool for the upgrade is
> apt-get.
>
>   http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgradingpackages
>
>   "The recommended way to upgrade from previous Debian GNU/Linux
>   releases is to use the package management tool apt-get. In previous
>   releases, aptitude was recommended for this purpose, but recent
>   versions of apt-get provide equivalent functionality and also have
>   shown to more consistently give the desired upgrade results."
>
> Also the recommendation is to do an 'apt-get upgrade' before doing an
> 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.
>
>   http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#minimal-upgrade
>
>   "In some cases, doing the full upgrade (as described below) directly
>   might remove large numbers of packages that you will want to
>   keep. We therefore recommend a two-part upgrade process, first a
>   minimal upgrade to overcome these conflicts, then a full upgrade
>   ... This has the effect of upgrading those packages which can be
>   upgraded without requiring any other packages to be removed or
>   installed."
>
> That will enable upgrades of packages that can be upgraded without
> doing any package removals.  It avoids the problem space for
> dependency management since the package list can't change.  Then after
> the majority of packages have been installed the 'dist-upgrade' can
> add and remove packages to create a new package list solution.


I had 'kde-standard' installed and it was upgraded, so I did not have 
any problem with using aptitude.


> Make sure you upgrade the kernel before doing the udev upgrade.
> Otherwise you may have an unbootable system and need to recover
> manually using rescue media.


The kernel was upgraded as I noted and I did make sure it was bootable 
before the reboot.


>   http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgrading-udev
>
> > one problem was aptitude wanted to restart a list of services and
> > one of them was kdm, so do yourself a favor and remove kdm from the
> > list to restart or you will have a mess with x going while
> > underneath x where you can't see aptitude will still be doing it's
> > thing and you will not be able to get back to see what aptitude is
> > doing,
>
> You can switch back to the console with Alt-F1.
>
>   http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#console-change
>
>   "If you are running the upgrade using the system's local console you
>   might find that at some points during the upgrade the console is
>   shifted over to a different view and you lose visibility of the
>   upgrade process. For example, this will happen in desktop systems
>   when gdm is restarted.
>
>   To recover the console where the upgrade was running you will have to
>   use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch back to the virtual terminal 1 if in the
>   graphical startup screen or use Alt+F1 if in the local text-mode
>   console. Replace F1 with the function key with the same number of the
>   virtual terminal the upgrade was running in. You can also use Alt+Left
>   Arrow or Alt+Left Arrow to switch between the different text-mode
>   terminals."


Good to know, thanks! Using Ctrl+Alt+F1 put me in a "new shell" and 
that's where I got screwed, because aptitude was still running in the 
other shell, but I was able to recover and complete the upgrade, if kdm 
had not started there would have been no problem at all.


> > After the full-upgrade there where somethings I wanted to check so I
> > did aptitude search linux-image to make sure I had the squeeze
> > kernel installed and it was but grub was not configured to use the
> > new kernel so I ran grub-update, if you have grub installed to the
> > MBR that's about all you need to know and good luck if you decide to
> > do the upgrade.
>
> I don't see information about the grub2 switch in the release notes.
> That would be something that should be in there.  Good catch.
>
> Bob


Thanks for the notes.  Like most Alpha Males I discard the manual and 
learn the hard way. :-)
--
Jimmy Johnson

Debian Lenny upgraded to Squeeze - KDE 4.4.5 at sda9
Registered Linux User #380263