[kwlug-disc] why would you do "apt-get dist-upgrade" regularly?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2009, Chris Frey wrote:

> As Lori mentioned, there's two ways to refer to a release.
> Consider these /etc/apt/sources.lists lines:
>
>    deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
>
> and
>
>    deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
>
> Currently these point to the same repositories.  But once Squeeze
> becomes the next stable, the second line will point to squeeze
> automatically, since the "stable" symlinks will have been updated on
> the servers.
>
> The first line will stay with what you have, until *you're* ready to
> upgrade.

  yup, that's my understanding, which is why, earlier this week, when
i wanted to upgrade a system from sarge to etch, i *first* just
upgraded the sarge install -- that upgraded just over 70 packages,
after which the system continued to run fine.  that was what i
considered phase 1 -- getting "sarge" completely up to date.

  the next phase -- which i haven't done yet -- will be to edit
/etc/apt/sources.list, change "sarge" to "etch", and run a *full*
upgrade, which i'm assuming will take the system to a fully-upgraded
etch system.  that is, not just the *original* etch install, but one
that incorporates all of the etch upgrades that followed.  at that
point, i will have a fully-upgraded etch system, which i will allow to
run for a while, watch carefully, and fix any possible breakage.

  after that, phase 3 would be from etch to lenny, exactly the same
way.  does that make sense?

rday
--


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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

        Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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