Upgrading debian (was Re: tar archives)

[Geoff Shang]

Hi:

I'd first start by reading the apt-get(8) and sources.list(5) manpages.
then edit /etc/apt/sources.list according to your desired debian mirror
location and the distribution that you would like to upgrade to.  I tend to
put lines in for stable and frozen and uncomment the ones I want at the
time.  Using a closer mirror than debian.org wil save on net traffic and
probably result in better throughput.

Once you have all this set, do:

apt-get update

This updates apt's list of available packages and dependancies.  Then do:

apt-get dist-upgrade

This will upgrade your distribution.  Note that new packages will only be
installled if they are needed to satisfy dependancies.  The process will
let you know how much data will need to be fetched and will prompt you
whether to continue.  If you are disconnected during download, no worry,
you can resume it later and apt will cope with it.

Geoff.