Hendrik Boom wrote: > But I'm stuck. The next step is to issue > > apt-get dist-upgrade > > but I can't figure out where to type this in. I can log in using gdm, > but terminals found there may expire during the upgrade, leaving > everything in an inconsistent state. Debian takes care to keep your login working during an upgrade. For gdm, this means that upgrading gdm or X won't force X to restart or you to log out. For ssh this means that logged in ssh sessions are guaranteed to keep working while the ssh server, libc, etc, are upgraded. If this failed to work right it would be a serious bug. (However, sshing in to upgrade a system running network manager does indeed not work; while I feel it's a serious bug the bug report about that has still not been dealt with sadly.) It's also worth mentioning that dpkg and apt are very robust against being interrupted in the middle of an upgrade, and even if that did happen somehow (perhaps you have a power outage) the worst you should need is to run 'dpkg --configure --pending' before resuming the process (aptitude would run that for you). The only time I would worry about an upgrade being interrupted is on embedded hardware when the kernel is being written to flash; an operation that if interrupted can brick some devices or require a convoluted workaround. > And I can't use cntl-alt-F1 to get a text console, because all I get is a > blank black screen. Is gdm taking over the text consoles and disallowing > them? How do I get my text consoles back so I can proceed with the rest > of the upgrade? This should not be happening, but I'd get X upgraded first and see if it still happens. It's quite possible that you need a new X to go with the new kernel you already have to avoid this problem. -- see shy jo
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