-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi guys, I think there may be some confusion about Debian upgrading here. Maybe it's mine, not sure. Let me describe what I understand, and have been using successfully for some time now: 1. both apt-get and aptitude have two different variations of the upgrade command. The first variation is called simply "upgrade" in apt-get, but aptitude calls it "safe-upgrade". That means that: apt-get upgrade and aptitude safe-upgrade are actually synonyms for each other. What this first variation does is to upgrade ONLY those already installed packages that can be upgraded WITHOUT deleting or adding anything else. It's very conservative. The other variation is called "dist-upgrade" by apt-get, and is called "full-upgrade" by aptitude. That means that: apt-get dist-upgrade and aptitude full-upgrade are also synonyms for each other. What this variation does is to examine the dependencies among installed packages, and upgrade those that are installed, even if doing so requires the deletion of other installed packages or the installing of some missing ones. Of course it tries to do so without breaking anything. In my experience aptitude does this a hell of a lot smarter than apt-get does. But neither variation of the upgrade command is intended to move from etch to lenny, from lenny to sid, or any other such major step up. To do that, here is what I generally do, and it has never failed me: 1. Change your archive URL's in /etc/apt/sources.list to the next higher distribution level. DO NOT try going from etch to sid, leapfrogging over lenny. To go from etch to sid, go first from etch to lenny, then from lenny to sid, as follows: 2. Do an apt-get -q update to freshen your local package information. The -q option suppresses repeated identical progress messages. Actually, you might as well do it with aptitude, same syntax, and stick with aptitude throughout the next steps. 3. Do an aptitude install of several critical packages, including dpkg, apt-utils, and aptitude. Once done, your upgrade tools at least are appropriate for your targeted system. 4. Next to an aptitude safe-upgrade, which will be huge, but will upgrade only those packages that can be upgraded without collateral damage. 5. If you are superstitious like I am, do another aptitude update. It might not have anything to do, but who knows? 6. Finally, do an aptitude -q full-upgrade. Chances are that this will be a huge step too, but perhaps most of the work has already been done in step 4. 7. Reboot. You are running your new system. Actually, you are running your new system, but with your old kernel. You have NOT replaced your old kernel with any of the steps above. You might want to do that now, after moving up to your new system, but that's another matter entirely. Debian will never replace a running kernel for you, but will offer you a number of convenient tools for kernel compiles and installs if you want to take advantage of them. But repeat after me: apt-get dist-upgrade does NOT take you from one release to the next, and neither does aptitude full-upgrade. I hope this helps someone. If I am doing something stupid or wrong here please point it out. Then it will be I who am helped. Chuck - -- The Moon is Waning Crescent (32% of Full) My web site is: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net and my cell phone is: 1-518-334-9022. -------- Don't tell me what you dreamed last night for I've been reading Freud. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIGDVL0maTgpPXM9cRAjbvAJ9YTHq8NP7lyEn+znCb75NTJOV48gCggeGA 2Biogq2e6mLLK0aNjW6DSoE= =047j -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
