I now have a total of 4 Linux machines running Debian-2.0-beta (including one DEC-Alpha running the current hamm tree). Except for the DEC-Alpha, all of these machines were upgraded from 1.3.1r6. After my bad experience with the first upgrade, I wanted to state how my subsequent upgrades have been.
Recall that my first upgrade was a disaster (see previous post). The libc5-2-libc6 mini howto went well and the system was stable at that point. However, the wholesale upgrade of packages via dselect did not work and crashed my system. I eventually was able to recover, but this should not have happened. I recommend to the developers (if they have not already done so) to try an upgrade like this and get it to work. I tried a different route with the subsequent upgrades that proved successful. After I performed the libc5-to-libc6 via the mini-howto (incidently I had to add several more package upgrades during the l5-2-l6 upgrade guided by the Debian package dependency messages), I performed upgrades of individual packages "by hand" via dpkg. Basically, I would have a window open running dselect that would show me a batch of packages that needed upgrading during the select point of dselect. I would either print this screen out or flip screens back and forth to decide which packages to upgrade. In another window I would be running dpkg. I would cd to the directory containing the packages (usually a batch of about 10 or less from the same category) and only needed to type in the first few characters of the package name followed by the tab key. I would typically install a batch of 10 or less at a time (with a single dpkg command). For example, I started with the required packages in the base subdirectory. There may be an even simpler way to do this with dpkg, but this was sufficient for me and it worked! This process took a couple of hours to about 8 hours depending on the number of packages and complexity of the machine installation. I now have a nice stable system. This method may not have been necessary on these subsequent machines, but after the disaster of the first machine, I was not willing to take chances. There were a few minor configuration glitches, but the system is largely quite clean to upgrade in this manner. I would now feel comfortable to upgrade subsequent packages via dselect if needed. However, it is usually quicker for smaller numbers of packages to install directly via dpkg. In fact, I have found that I only use dselect for finding packages to install on the Alpha (and now the i386). -- /------------------------------------------------------------------\ |James D. Freels, P.E._i, Ph.D. |Phone: (423)576-8645 | | L | A | |Oak Ridge National Laboratory |FAX: (423)574-9172 | H | I | L | |Research Reactors Division |work e-m: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| F | N | P | |P. O. Box 2008 |home e-m: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | I | U | H | |Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6392|world's best neutrons | R | X | A | \------------------------------------------------------------------/ -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
