On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Patrick Doyle wrote:
[...]
> It looks now like I should just upgrade to the latest KDE. Since I am
> somewhat new to Debian (although not new to Linux, and certainly not
> new to upgrades gone awry), I am a little paranoid about just editing
> my sources.list file and executing (I believe this would be the
> correct one):
>
> # apt-get upgrade kde
Not quite. I don't know specifically about KDE, but in general you can
do:
# apt-get update
This step will fetch the latest package lists, which point to the latest
packages available.
Then, you can do one of:
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# apt-get install <package> [ <package> ... ]
The first one (upgrade) tries to upgrade all installed packages without
removing anything, while the second (dist-upgrade) will remove things if
it needs to - but never gratuitously. :)
Finally, if you ask to install a package already present it, and it
alone, will be upgraded for you.
The easiest way to upgrade only KDE is probably the following sequence:
# apt-get update
# apt-get --show-upgraded dist-upgrade
* say no when it asks if you want to continue
# apt-get install kde ...
The second will show all the packages it would upgrade, and you can then
select the KDE specific packages out of the list and use 'install' to
target them specifically.
> Does anybody know if there some way I could do this in steps, in such
> a manner as I could download the files to be upgraded, burn them to
> CD-ROM, and then upgrade from the CD-ROM later?
Sure. You can do it manually. Automating the process is harder, and
you are probably better off with a real backup process than a rebuild
process, but YMMV.
# apt-get -d install kde ...
This will download all the .deb files to /var/cache/apt/archives/
Then you can burn them to CD, or whatever takes your fancy. To
"restore" them, either copy them into that same directory or use
'dpkg -i <deb file>' to install them without apt.
Er, finally, maybe a front-end tool like aptitude or dselect might make
this easier for you. I certainly like aptitude in unstable. :)
> I realized that this is more of a "debian-users" type of question, but
> the reason I ask is specifically because I have a laptop -- I prefer
> to keep all of my installation media & upgrades on CDROM so that, when
> everything falls apart (as it does occasionally), and I am in the
> airport/hotel/car trying to reinstall from scratch, I can just pull
> out the CD's, follow my notes, and recreate what I had before.
As I said, you may find that a backup system - even just creating a tar
of the whole system as root, and burning to CD/DVD - is the easiest way
to get a "snapshot" of the system.
To restore from something like that, you can boot off a bootable CD[1],
format and mount your hard disk, then untar.
Packages like 'mondo' can automate this whole process for you, which is
also nice.
Daniel
Footnotes:
[1] I usually use the Debian install CD, then switch to VT 2 once it
has gotten to the installer prompts.
--
What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to
make life more livable.
-- Louise Nevelson
