Hi there,
I just updated my slink system to "minimum potato". As I read many
questions about the risk updating a slink system to potato on this list,
I think the following report might be of interest for some of you.
My machine is some old P100, 64MB, running Debian/GNU Linux since
version 0.93R6 or something and I would myself call an experienced user.
As you all know, slink is stable, but not really up-to-date. I wanted
to try some new debian packages which depend on glibc-2.1 and as I never
had real problems upddating my system since using debian, I was very
confident that updating to potato would be straightforward. And, lucky
me, it was. So here's what I did:
1) Updated to the last slink version (to be sure to have the newest
version of dpkg, apt-get etc.). I did it with the following command:
apt-get dist-upgrade
2) After that, I edited my /etc/apt/source.list file to use the unstable
branch - I just had to change "stable" into "unstable".
3) As my machine is connected to the Internet via ISDN only, I wanted to
make a "small" update, i.e. downloading only the new libc
first. Impatient Jonas did:
apt-get update
apt-get install libc6
apt-get installed ldso (I supposed it to do that ;-) and new glibc
and removed some older packages.
4) Works.
The machine seemed to work fine (which means: did not crash) and I was
able to start some applications (which were slink ones, but now use the
new libc!). This was the minimum part, and I'm really excited about a)
debian, b) apt-get, c) my impatience.
Of course, being curious (and to be sure everything is ok) I installed
some of the new "important" packages, too. I also did "the perl thing",
upgraded the X libs and bins without having trouble (the only trouble
I'll have is with my telephone bill, because some dependencies resulted
in updating my tetex, too ;-). At the moment dselect does not show any
upgraded or new "important" packages any more, but most of the
applications are slink versions, and I only found one which does not
work (I do not have the sources for it...). I used the wonderful
"apt-move" tool to create a local mirror of the new packages I installed
- the tree is about 75 MB now, but includes tetex completely, gimp
etc. which were not absolutely necessary. There are some (in my eyes
strange) dependency problems dselect complains about (editor ae can not
be installed), but as the system works fine, I'll have a look at them
later.
I have to admit that I do not need the machine in a working environment,
so if something would have gone wrong, it would have been no real
problem. In fact, the only real problem I had was some kind of user
error: Before doing all this, I wanted to save my libc and instead
cp'ying it, I mv'ed - yack! After all, you do not need to move or copy
your libc ;-), but be sure to have the rescue disk available.
One last thing: I'm not subscribed to this list, so do not expect me to
answer to comments/questions etc. when replying only here. Feel free to
cc: comments to me, if I have time to answer, I'll do so.
And you, developers: Thank you for this great distribution!
Jonas
--
"OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name" (Linus Torvalds)
