(cmiiw, may I conclude/rewrite)
[Aurelio Turco]
Of all the Linux Distributions, Debian is said to have the most
advanced packaging system. I regard the packaging system as very
important. So, I will be installing Debian (probably 2.2r2, from CD).
But before I do that, I would like to clarify what the recommended
upgrade strategy is. I mean: After installing a (recent) Debian
(stable) distribution, how should one keep it up to date?
[Osamu Aoki]
One thing to remember is "be safe than sorry".
Use of -u option for apt-get is a good idea to force display
of upgraded package in any environment. Run with "-s" if you
want to be absolutely sure in advance. I thought dist-upgrade
takes time but resolves more dependency issues than simple
upgrade. So maybe used in more occasion.
Release version to release version upgrade should follow
instruction on debian web site. But if you do partial upgrade
to testing, you may expect some problem but it is rare.
In general, If dist-upgrade causes problem, go slow is what I do.
Install libc, then libdb*, then perl, then apt, ...in the
sequence prior to do dist-upgrade.
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If I have understood the docs correctly:
1: Do "apt-get update", to update the packages list.
Do this before any of 2,3,4 below.
2: Do "apt-get install a_particular_package", to upgrade or newly
install a particular package. Do this to upgrade or newly install
individual packages as needed.
[Danie Roux]
It will also install and configure the packages on which
it depends.
3: Do "apt-get upgrade", to upgrade all packages for which a newer
version is available. Do this periodically between Debian
releases (be they major, minor or point/revision).
4: Do "apt-get dist-upgrade", to upgrade the distribution as a whole
(to the latest release). Do this as soon as a new Debian release
(be it major, minor or point/revision) becomes available.
[Tom Allison]
note on dist-upgrade -- sometimes you have a series of
dist-upgrade/dist-upgrade/upgrade/upgrade to get all the
dependencies taken care of. This makes sense if you think
about it -- sometimes you want things to install in a certain
order.
5: Install again from scratch, to upgrade to a new release.
Do this only if your installed release is too far behind the release
you wish to upgrade to.
[Paul 'Baloo' Johnson]
I would only suggest this one if your distribution doesn't
have even an old version of apt.
[Danie Roux]
This should not be necessary, because of Debian's great
dependencies system.
[Colin Watson]
You should never have to install from scratch, certainly,
but upgrading directly from, say, 2.0 to 2.2 isn't necessarily
guaranteed to be a one-step operation. There are sometimes brief
instructions in the release notes about this sort of thing if
anybody found time to work them out.
If all else fails, old releases are archived on archive.debian.org
and its mirrors, so if you find yourself with a buzz (1.1) machine
that you need to upgrade you can always pull each release in turn
from there. It might take a reboot or two as you work through
compatible kernels.
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--
Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim - VLSM-TJT - http://rms46.vlsm.org
-- Read my lips: war and reelection do not mix! ----------
