Re: Installing same packages in a Squeeze installation in a new Wheezy installation
On Mon, 4 Nov 2013 14:20:58 +0000
Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 04 November 2013 12:19:45 Chris Bannister wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 02, 2013 at 02:20:17PM -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
> > > In a new box where the Wheezy OS will be freshly installed I want
> ^^^^^^^^^
> > > to install all the packages which I presently have in a box with
> > > Squeeze.
> >
> > Why can't you just upgrade?
>
> It's a *new* box. (See above.) There is no OS on it and it therefore
> cannot be upgraded.
>
> > IOW, unlikely that you'll get any help with your "jump through the
> > hoops" method.
>
> He's not jumping through hoops, he is asking for help ensuring that
> he will get the system he wants. I certainly hope - and expect -
> that he _will_ get some help. :-)
>
I would guess that he's already had the best advice he's going to get:
migrate to the same OS on the new machine, then upgrade, or vice versa.
A year or so ago, I needed to migrate squeeze to another machine, and
that was enough work for me in one go, without going through the trauma
of a version upgrade at the same time. It was a 32 to 64 bit
transition, so just moving the hard drive and praying was not an option.
A version upgrade will always have the possibility of bringing a
significant configuration change to some packages, and with a package
that is already configured well away from default, you will have neither
the option of using the new maintainer's file nor of keeping your own,
nor even just pasting some diffs. I hit this one with exim4, on what I
think was an etch to lenny upgrade. The later exim4 had dropped support
for debconf, which my previous configuration had used in many places.
Just for added fun, the failed configuration left exim4 uninstallable
and unpurgeable, and even dpkg used in the height of anger with lots of
-f didn't help. I had to resort to deleting files manually.
With a same-OS migration, you at least stand a good chance of just being
able to copy over the configuration files. Even that isn't a certainty,
since you may be migrating an upgraded OS to a clean installation, and
there may be significant differences. If you've upgraded from lenny to
squeeze and then to wheezy, a clean wheezy base installation with the
same additional packages will almost certainly not result in an
identical system, not even the same set of packages.
So I'd go with a two-stage approach. At worst, it isn't more than a
small amount of extra work, since whatever difficulties are encountered
in each stage would probably all have been problems in a one-stage
attempt. It may well be less work, if a one-stage attempt results in a
real show-stopper. He is at least in the position of having a working
system, and not being under time pressure to fix things, as is the case
with an in-place migration. This would tip the balance for me towards
migrating first, then upgrading, while my original machine was still
running undisturbed.
--
Joe
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