Hello, On Tue, Sep 01, 2020 at 08:23:33PM -0500, R. Ramesh wrote: > I did think about fresh install, but every method has its drawback. There > are subtle changes that I could not get right in the past, so I chose > upgrade path.
Last year I did do a squeeze to stretch upgrade by upgrading to each release in turn (not directly from squeeze to stretch). It did work. I did have to use archive.debian.org and I vaguely recall I had to tell it to ignore expired keys and essentially trust archive.debian.org to give me untampered-with files, but I don't recall the exact details and was travelling at the time I read your email so I decided not to reply with vagueness. So, just wanted to say that this *is* possible even from very old releases, if one is willing to put the effort in. Of course, you are much better off keeping up with the Debian release cycle at least to the point where the first release you're upgrading to hasn't been archived yet! The base Debian install is very easy to upgrade; it's always the applications that cause the grief. A multi-release upgrade like that can move through several different completely different configuration layouts for big packages like web servers and database servers, leaving you to pick up the pieces at the end. The downtime from that can be significant and it must be weighed against the approach of doing a new install (possibly on different, concurrently running hardware) and just moving the data over. > The keys expire on an archive that is supposed to be accessible. The expired keys do complicate life but my understanding of the rationale is that the limited key lifetime serves as a sort of contract regarding the integrity of the files. Once a release has been archived it does not fall under that promise from the project any more and so the expired keys serve as a way to underscore that. Without the key expiry, users may think that Debian has promised to take care of the integrity of those files forever, but it hasn't. I'm trying to remember what I had to do. It may have been: # apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false update but I admit it could also have been me manually downloading the .deb files from archive,debian.org and installing them with dpkg. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "I remember the first time I made love. Perhaps it was not love exactly but I made it and it still works." — The League Against Tedium
