[buug] Re: Woody is out!

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jerry Cheung (jrcow97 at yahoo.com):

> Does anyone have the new woody CDs' and would be willing to let me
> borrow them because a friend of mine would be really grateful as he is
> still using slink.  Some of the packages are really old :(

Does your friend have even 33.6 kbps Internet access?  If so, it 
would probably be practical for him to upgrade directly off the Net
using apt-get.

In his shoes, I'd do that in a couple of stages, so as not to attempt
too big a jump at once.  Login as root.  And then:

1.  Edit /etc/apt/sources.list as follows, comment out other lines:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ oldstable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US oldstable/non-US main contrib non-free

Then, do 
# apt-get update
...to get the lists of available packages.

Because this will be a fairly big jump (slink to previous Debian-stable
= potato), we'll upgrade critical packages first:

# apt-get install perl libc6 dpkg apt apt-utils debconf

Now, upgrade the system as a whole to potato:

# apt-get dist-upgrade

2.  Re-edit /etc/apt/sources.list as follows:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free

Then do:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install perl libc6 dpkg apt apt-utils debconf
# apt-get dist-upgrade

That takes you to current Debian-stable, "woody".

3.  Re-edit /etc/apt/sources.list as follows:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org testing/updates main contrib non-free

Then do:

# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade

That takes you to current Debian-testing, "sarge".



It might be quicker, though, for your friend to just download the floppy
images for woody, and then rsync every week or so to the "testing"
branch's current contents.  It's kind of silly to install Debian and
then not use apt-get to stay in sync.

Other stuff of interest here:  http://linuxmafia.com/debian/tips
(Warrning:  The file's a mess, and most things of interest are near
the bottom.)

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick at linuxmafia.com     modern-American-English-usage-improvement association.