[Sussex] Upgrading Debian (was Mozilla & glibc)

[Steve Dobson]

Hi Gavin

On 14 Aug 2003 Gavin Stevens
> OK, so I've now got dselect pointing at the relevant sites to upgrade
> & keep up to date. It got the updated list of packages earlier, so all
> seems to be working.

First point. Stop using "deselect" and start using the "apt-get" from
the command line.  The way deselect handles package updates is broken;
it works but there are better ways of doing stuff with less work that
"apt-get" gets right.

If you want a "pretty" front end then "apt-get install aptitude".

> Am I right in thinking that when I want to do the upgrade, it will
> replace anything already installed, but won't store or download the
> whole distribution onto my HD? This might sound like a rather thick
> question, but I ask it anyway because it might not be too bad
> upgrading what I have, as opposed to downloading everything. When I
> ran Windows, I didn't shy away from downloading Star Office 5.2 all
> in one go (80+ MB).

There are two things here.

An "upgrade" is to install later versions of packages from the major
release your running.

An "dist-upgrade" will jump to the new major release.

Please post your /etc/apt/sources.list 'cos I've flying blind at 
the momeent.  I'll advise better once I've seen it.

> Just out of interest (I had the luxury of some time this afternoon),
> I decided to try the rogue Woody CDs from CheepLinux on the 3
> computers here at home ( I was a bit miffed with them when they said
> it must be some incompatibility with my CD-R & that the CDs definitely
> worked). In each case I temporarily altered the BIOS to boot from
> CDROM. Here's what each had to say:

> Machine 1 (my computer): Started to boot & gave the opening screen,
> but failed when I pressed ENTER. Machine 2 (my partner's): Started to
> boot after flashing the error message given on Machine 3 (below) &
> gave the opening screen. I could not go further as my partner needs
> her machine for work.

> Machine 3 (now my stepson's - formerly my old Debian box): Gave the
> following error message:
> "ISOLINUX 1.67/debian-cd 2002-05-14 isolinux: Failed to get sector
> size, assuming 0800. Press a key to retry". Pressing a key achieved
> nothing.

This looks like incomatable media to me - but I'm no expert.

Steve