Re: Debmirror

["Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com>]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 09:37:14AM -0400, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2021-07-25 3:42 a.m., Gunnar Gervin wrote:
> > Polyna.
> > I always have heard it's better to put all documents, files, photos etc
> > in a usb or external harddisk. And do a clean reinstall of the updated
> > distro.
> Can you explain a bit further... ?
> 
> If I follow what I read in your message...
> You are telling me that :
> It is recommended to backup user's personal data
> Do a clean reinstall
> When Debian publishes update ?
> 
> What type of update ?
> Point release ?
> Release ?
> 
Point releases should just "upgrade". After all, they're mostly collections
of bugfixes - at that point, if you've been updating regularly, there's very
little difference.

When it comes to doing a major release upgrade: 10-11, say, it's always
not a _bad_ idea to back up documents files and so on, just in case 
something goes wrong, but it's not vital by any means.

If you are repartitioning disks / changing boot method from Legacy -> UEFI
than it might be a good idea to save off all data and re-install from scratch
depending on how much you're doing - but there's no absolute requiremnt.

There have been a couple of transitions that had the potential to break
stuff - the original ELF transition, way back, sysvinit -> systemd - but
otherwise you could take a Debian 4.0 say and update it to Debian 10
by using standard systm tools.

> This look pretty heavy to me...and sounds much more like something that
> is done on the Windows world.

Absolutely. I don't think it is true of Debian. It is, however, the 
recommended way of dealing with Red Hat/CentOS/Almalinux/Rocky Linux
at major version change. [There is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux script
that _may_ do this - but folks have had signifncant problems if there
are any third party packages installed - sometimes to the extent of
including EPEL packages.]

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

> 
> Why would it be needed to do a clean reinstall ?
> If you work properly and don't litter around then everything in your
> system is registered as file in the package manager and the
> configuration are preserved thru configuration file litigation (ask you
> what to do when a config file has been changed from default).
> 
> Would you have the reference regarding this ?
> 
> Are talking about clean the apt cache before doing upgrade ?
> 
> Explain more because this smell like non-sense to me.
> > BR,
> > geg
> > 
> > On Sun, 25 Jul 2021, 04:41 Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside,
> > <debian@polynamaude.com <mailto:debian@polynamaude.com>> wrote:
> > 
> >     Hi,
> > 
> >     On 2021-07-24 9:33 p.m., David Wright wrote:
> >     > On Sat 24 Jul 2021 at 19:52:36 (-0400), Polyna-Maude
> >     Racicot-Summerside wrote:
> >     >> Here are the message I get after my debmirror when I do apt-get
> >     update
> >     >>
> >     >> Err:31 file:/mnt/mirror/debian buster-updates/main amd64 Contents
> >     (deb)
> >     >>   File not found -
> >     >> /mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/main/Contents-amd64 (2:
> >     No such
> >     >> file or directory)
> >     >> Reading package lists... Done
> >     >> E: Failed to fetch
> >     >> file:/mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster/main/Contents-amd64  File
> >     not found
> >     >> - /mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster/main/Contents-amd64 (2: No such
> >     file
> >     >> or directory)
> >     >> E: Failed to fetch
> >     >> file:/mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/main/Contents-amd64 
> >     File
> >     >> not found -
> >     /mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/main/Contents-amd64
> >     >> (2: No such file or directory)
> >     >>
> >     >> The command I used for creating the mirror is
> >     >>
> >     >> debmirror --all --progress --verbose --method=http
> >     >> --dist=buster,buster-updates,buster-backports
> >     >> --section=main,contrib,non-free --arch=amd64,i386 --rsync-extra=none
> >     >> --source --i18n --keyring
> >     /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg
> >     >> --root=debian --host=debian.mirror.iweb.ca
> >     <http://debian.mirror.iweb.ca> /mnt/mirror/debian
> >     >>
> >     >> Got idea ?
> >     >
> >     > --getcontents ?
> >     >
> >     Giving this one a try....
> > 
> I'm not sure you have close to a clue what my problem is.
> Because when I simply change my repository to the usual Debian one, I
> can do my apt cache update properly.
> 
> > 
> >     > Cheers,
> >     > David.
> >     >
> > 
> >     Thanks
> > 
> >     -- 
> >     Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside
> >     -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside
> -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development
>