On 2024-08-19 19:24, Mike wrote:
Bob Mroczka wrote:
I attempted to upgrade my system from debian 11 to 12 following the
instructions provided at
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/update-upgrade-debian-11-to-debian-12-bookworm.
In the future, consider using https://www.debian.org/release/stable/ and
such. cyberciti.biz usually just copies content from elsewhere, to sell ads
against it. It may not be authoritative.
Do you have any suggestions for further identifying the cause of this
and/or resolving this without recovering from back up?
My only thought is that maybe, somehow, you're running a mix of incompatible
libraries and executables, some upgraded and some not. You might go into
`aptitude`, if it runs, and see what it thinks.
The "rescue" option on the Debian image may be able to help you mount and
install a proper installation on your existing disks, since it runs its
own copy of Linux on a ramdisk. But it's been a long time since I've used
it, so I forget the procedure.
Further to Mike's suggestion, sometimes going back to apt-get instead of
apt can work.
Also, since the full-upgrade step has failed, you should be able to
reboot and try again. One of the kernels should be able to work.
However, you can also boot to a command prompt, which might be safer.
To fix dpkg, I suspect that it's the tar package that needs to be fixed.
That may just be a single binary that you can copy from another system.
Worst case scenario is to do a fresh install of bookworm. If your /home
is in a separate partition, that should be easy and safe. Just don't let
it reformat or erase /home. Use manual partitioning.
I personally don't like using sudo for everything. When I have more than
one command, I just do a sudo bash and run them as root.
Looking at the cybercit.biz article, it's doing some stuff that I find a
little strange. Step 3 should just ask you to run sed to replace
bullseye with bookworm - less chance for errors.
And I don't like step 5 at all. The difference between versions often
includes packages being replaced. Upgrading without new packages seems
like asking for trouble.
