On Thu, Dec 03, 2015 at 12:36:23AM -0500, Harry Putnam wrote:
Resurrecting a neglected OS, need a little coaching about the output of `aptitude full-upgrade'.I want to know if this output is fairly typical or what one might expect after neglecting an OS a good while... but mostly if going ahead is likely to land my subpar skilled behind in hot water.I've stripped the hefty lists of pkgs leaving only what I thought would be enough for an experienced hand to be able to offer an educated opinion if this looks like a problematic `full-upgrade' or if it is one to pursue.
If this is a previously released Debian, then it may be easier to upgrade step-wise. That is, don't try to update Debian 4 to Debian 8, but go 4 -> 5 -> 6 ...
Secondly, some points I find useful with regards to maintaining a system:
Mark packages you don't want as "auto" and only keep the packages you want as "manual". That is, most people don't want lib* packages, or indeed *-common packages. Oh, yes, the should be on your system but you, as the administrator don't really care about them. Generally, you want a user-facing program (iceweasel, mutt, gnome-control-center); you don't really care if that brings in libfoo23 or libfoo24. The point of this exercise is to tell the package manager which packages you actually want installed and which it can feel more free to delete.
Secondly, use the TUI mode of aptitude and tune the resolver. At the prompt below, you can press 'e' to enter the TUI mode at which point it's easier to see what's being proposed. Now, go through the list of removals and press 'r' on a few of the packages you can't live without (i.e. You probably want to keep your browser, but your window manager may have been replaced by something else). When you have a few proposals rejected, press '.' to request another solution from aptitude. You will probably need to keep rejecting some removals and requesting another solution, but the best solution you're likely to get is "0 removals, X packages kept". With luck, that will also include some updates/installations, too. Press 'g' to Go Ahead with the changes and then you can take a look at the packages which are being held. Hopefully, the task of "Why are these updates broken?" will then be smaller.
aptitude upgrade blah blah
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One thing bugging me is the idea of leaving the odd dependencies unresolved (the last items 11, 12, 13)Are there red flags in the above output that mean I need to do preliminary work before `full-uptrade' ?
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