Re: Upgrading Wheezy Beta to Wheezy Stable?
----- Original Message -----
> From: Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Cc:
> Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 6:31 AM
> Subject: Re: Upgrading Wheezy Beta to Wheezy Stable?
>
> On Lu, 17 dec 12, 19:34:30, Patrick Bartek wrote:
>> Read somewhere that updating/upgrading from Wheezy Beta eventually to
>> Wheezy Stable using the "wheezy" named repos (not
> "testing" named
>> ones) has potential problems, and the best option is a clean install
>> of Wheezy Stable.
>
> [citation needed]
Can't give you one. It wasn't from any "official" source, just from general reading, experience and opinions of the process.
In the past, upgrading from one major release version to another regardless of the distro has always been an iffy procedure with lots and lots of hoops to jump through with no guarantee of success. So, I've always done clean installs when "upgrading." Safer. The only experience I have with a true dist-upgrade is with Debian by the way about 5 years ago--Sarge to Etch, and ultimately to Lenny when it was released. The documentation had step-by-step instructions, about three or four pages worth, of what needed to be done, deleted, config'd, installed, uninstalled, etc. BEFORE even doing the dist-upgrade. Quite involved, but it worked without problems. All the releases were Stable versions.
>> True or false?
>
> Your question contains some misunderstandings[1], but I will try to
> answer what I think you want to know.
>
> [snip]
>
> You question seems to indicate you are not very familiar with Debian
> and/or it's package management and upgrading process. I strongly suggest
> you stick to whatever the current 'stable' release is (currently
> squeeze) and upgrade only after the release, following the Release
> Notes.
Having used only stable versions of Debian, it is true I'm not totally familiar with the whole development process, but neither am I a tyro.
Some months ago, I had considered using Squeeze, the stable version, as a replacement for my primary OS, Fedora 12 64-bit, which has began to experience problems due to its age. Plus, I never cared for Fedora's 6 month release cycle, and wanted an OS with support times measured in years not months. Unfortuanately, I found Squeeze is not that much different from Fedora, code-versionwise. So, no point in using it as it's just as old, even though it's still supported. I plan to use this system another 5 years or so, so Wheezy it's going to be. I just don't want to wait for stable.
I want to get an early start by installing and configuring a Wheezy Beta (as a dual boot--which I've always done when upgrading to a new version of Fedora) and hoped that upgrading in steps over time to stable was possible. The Debian docs I've read, say it is.
>
> [1] at this moment wheezy *is* 'testing' and you can use either in
> sources.list. They will start to differ only when wheezy is released
> (becomes 'stable') at which point jenny will be 'testing'.
This is what I meant about setting the repositories:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main
and not
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main
The first instance will alway keep me on the Wheezy branch of the repo tree from Wheezy as "testing" through Wheezy as "stable." The second entry won't. So says Debian's docs.
Thanks for your advice.
B
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