debian speakup emacs upgrade

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi guys,

I think there may be some confusion about Debian upgrading here. Maybe
it's mine, not sure. Let me describe what I understand, and have been
using successfully for some time now:

1. both apt-get and aptitude have two different variations of the
upgrade command. The first variation is called simply "upgrade" in
apt-get, but aptitude calls it "safe-upgrade". That means that:

apt-get upgrade

and

aptitude safe-upgrade

are actually synonyms for each other. What this first variation does
is to upgrade ONLY those already installed packages that can be
upgraded WITHOUT deleting or adding anything else. It's very
conservative.

The other variation is called "dist-upgrade" by apt-get, and is called
"full-upgrade" by aptitude. That means that:

apt-get dist-upgrade

and

aptitude full-upgrade

are also synonyms for each other. What this variation does is to
examine the dependencies among installed packages, and upgrade those
that are installed, even if doing so requires the deletion of other
installed packages or the installing of some missing ones. Of course it
tries to do so without breaking anything. In my experience aptitude
does this a hell of a lot smarter than apt-get does.

But neither variation of the upgrade command is intended to move from
etch to lenny, from lenny to sid, or any other such major step up. To
do that, here is what I generally do, and it has never failed me:

1. Change your archive URL's in /etc/apt/sources.list to the next
higher distribution level. DO NOT try going from etch to sid,
leapfrogging over lenny. To go from etch to sid, go first from etch to
lenny, then from lenny to sid, as follows:

2. Do an apt-get -q update to freshen your local package information.
The -q option suppresses repeated identical progress messages.
Actually, you might as well do it with aptitude, same syntax, and stick
with aptitude throughout the next steps.

3. Do an aptitude install of several critical packages, including dpkg,
apt-utils, and aptitude.  Once done, your upgrade tools at least are
appropriate for your targeted system.

4. Next to an aptitude safe-upgrade, which will be huge, but will
upgrade only those packages that can be upgraded without collateral
damage.

5. If you are superstitious like I am, do another aptitude update. It
might not have anything to do, but who knows?

6. Finally, do an aptitude -q full-upgrade. Chances are that this will
be a huge step too, but perhaps most of the work has already been done
in step 4.

7. Reboot. You are running your new system.

Actually, you are running your new system, but with your old kernel.
You have NOT replaced your old kernel with any of the steps above. You
might want to do that now, after moving up to your new system, but
that's another matter entirely. Debian will never replace a running
kernel for you, but will offer you a number of convenient tools for
kernel compiles and installs if you want to take advantage of them. 

But repeat after me:

apt-get dist-upgrade does NOT take you from one release to the next,
and neither does aptitude full-upgrade. 

I hope this helps someone. If I am doing something stupid or wrong here
 please point it out. Then it will be I who am helped.

Chuck



- -- 
The Moon is Waning Crescent (32% of Full)

My web site is: http://hallenbeck.ftml.net and my cell phone is: 1-518-334-9022.
                                --------
Don't tell me what you dreamed last night for I've been reading Freud.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFIGDVL0maTgpPXM9cRAjbvAJ9YTHq8NP7lyEn+znCb75NTJOV48gCggeGA
2Biogq2e6mLLK0aNjW6DSoE=
=047j
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----