No longer really about that bugreport, I'm just thinking about
possible changes to section 4.
Justin B Rye wrote:
>> # 4.5 is about errors. not relevant
>> # 4.6 is inexplicably asking people to check a kernel meta-package is
>> installed -- this should be moved much earlier, in "preparing for the
>> upgrade" really
>
> And it even mentions the fact that you might want to do your kernel
> upgrade as part of the minimal system upgrade described in 4.4.5
> instead of waiting for the full-upgrade.
TODO #1: Find a better place to put 4.6.1
Instead of saying *after* the dist-upgrade that you should *also*
upgrade your kernel, it should advise *before* the dist-upgrade that
you should probably have a kernel metapackage installed, with the
extra step of upgrading your kernel manually if you haven't done that
demoted to an item in "things to do after the upgrade but before
rebooting" (see TODO #3).
>> Neither 4.7 nor 4.8 say to run "apt autopurge" to remove automatically
>> installed packages that are not needed.
>
> Yes, the procedure shows clear signs of having been designed many
> releases ago for aptitude/apt-get and only gradually adapted to use
> apt. I don't think much of those "grep|grep" commandlines in 4.6.1,
> either, though they've been there for a long long time. Couldn't it
> be just...
>
> See if a kernel metapackage is installed:
> $ dpkg -l linux-image\* | grep ^ii.\*meta
>
> If not, find one that you can install:
> $ apt-cache search linux-image-.\*meta
Huh? I tested this and numerous variants yesterday, but then
apparently I copied out one of the ones that doesn't work. Anyway,
that's TODO #2: improve these commandlines...
dpkg -l linux-image\* | grep ^ii.\*meta
apt-cache search linux-image- | grep meta
and while we're at it, update the "uname -r" example output from a
stretch kernel version to something more reasonable.
>> If i now do "apt autopurge" both gpg-wks-server and exim are removed,
>> along with several other things (some of which are in the "apt list
>> '~o'" recommended in 4.8)
>
> The real question is whether there's ever going to be anything in that
> ~o list that *wouldn't* be removed by an autopurge. And how about
> transitional dummy packages? As it happens I can do a check right
> now... Well, that's interesting:
> * "apt list \~o" finds 68 things to remove, including several video
> codecs and the bookworm kernel;
> * "apt -s autopurge" finds 75 things, not including kernels or codecs
> but including gcc-12-base, pkexec, and several python libraries;
> * "dpkg -l | grep ransitional" finds fonts-liberation2, policykit-1
> (which is already removed but not purged), and usr-is-merged.
> So yes, this wants to be an *extra* step.
TODO #3: restructure sections 4.6 through to .8
The sane way to organise it would be to move the "install a kernel
metapackage" stuff up to 4.1 or .2 and then make the rest of the
"install a kernel" part into a subsection:
4.6 Completing the upgrade
by which I mean "anything best done *before* rebooting"
4.6.1 manually installing a new kernel goes in this section
4.6.2 preparing for /tmp changes
4.6.3 NIC namechange warnings?
4.7 Post-reboot tidying
given that you can't remove your bookworm kernel until this point
it majes sense to put all these here:
4.7.1 Autopurgeables (with a mention of "apt list \~c")
4.7.2 Obsolete (meaning specifically ~o) packages
4.7.3 Transitional dummy packages
4.8 Planning ahead
things to do at least before the next dist-upgrade (?)
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
