I am cc-ing this back to debian-user because it contains information which will be useful to anyone considering an upgrade to hamm.
On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Stan Brown wrote: > >On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Stan Brown wrote: > > > >> All ths talk of libc5 to libc6 upgrades gotme thnking about upgarding. > >> Since it matters at this point in time for upgradeing, how do I > >> determine what version of Debian is on a given machine? > > > > cat /etc/debian_version > > great information. So since mne reports 1.2 what is the "name" of the > version on my box? Since most people on this list only talk names, not > numbers. debian 1.2 was code-named "rex". > And how hard is it going to be to upgrade this toe 2.0 ( hamm?). i have sucessfully run my autoupgrade script on a rex system...well, a system which was built as rex and upgraded out of "bo" while bo was still the "unstable" version. so the system was somewhere between rex and bo. Robert Hilliard is working on my script so that it fully supports an upgrade from rex. i think he said that he expects to have that done within a few days. when it's ready, he'll probably post his updated version to either debian-user or debian-devel or both. However, the script only does the potentially dangerous bits of the upgrade. i.e. libc6, libncurses, libreadline, bash and several other packages. if these packages are installed in the wrong order, then the system is likely to be extremely broken (bash wont work any more which makes it hard to fix). The script DOES successfully do that part of the upgrade. After it has run, it is still up to you to run dselect and upgrade the rest of the system. this is not an option - once you start upgrading to hamm, you really have to do a complete upgrade...there are too many incompatibilities between libc5 based bo (and rex) and the new libc6 based hamm. not completing the upgrade once you've started it will be a lot more trouble and a lot more work than just going ahead and doing it. depending on how many packages you have installed (and hence need to be upgraded) and whether you have a local mirror of debian or not, this could take half a day or a day to complete. if you've never done an upgrade to hamm before, set aside at least a day. if you've done it several times before, it'll be about half a day. Think carefully about whether you want to do this or whether you have the time to do this before you start. You'll end up with a much newer system with all the latest stuff (including bug fixes and security fixes) but it may cost you a day or more of anger, frustration, and hard work to get there...running the unstable release can be very rewarding but it has it's price too. If stability is more important to you than bleeding edge then DO NOT UPGRADE. if you decide to do the upgrade, remember the usual rules with dselect: 1. Go through the "Update" and "Select" phases. 2. Then "Install". If any problems, choose "Configure". 3. Then repeat the "Install" followed by "Configure" until dselect reports no problems. 4. Then "Remove" and finally "Quit". the other thing to remember about dselect is that the error messages it prints usually look a lot more serious than they really are - don't panic, just repeat the Configure & Install cycle as often as necessary. Occasionally you might have to shell out of dselect temporarily and use dpkg to install or remove a package or two by hand (this is more likely the longer you leave it between upgrades). if none of the above makes any sense to you then wait for hamm to be released as the new stable Debian 2.0 release. the upgrade will have been thoroughly tested(*) by then and will be a lot easier to get through. (*) from bo, at least. maybe not as an upgrade from rex. but you could always upgrade from rex to bo (which has been tested) and then immediately upgrade to hamm. craig -- craig sanders -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
