On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 01:28:05PM -0500, Eben King wrote:
<snip>
>
> Can dist-upgrade _only_ take me to Debian (which version?), or can it do
> other things as well? How does it decide?
>
> I use a custom-compiled kernel. I guess backing it up, then letting
> apt-get
> do its thing, then restoring it, should do the trick.
Where dist-upgrade takes you to depends on your apt config file. If
you're running on, say, Potato, and you do a dist-upgrade, it will bring
you up to whatever is the current stable (Etch?). However, if you change
your apt config to track testing or unstable, it will bring you all the
way up to the current testing/unstable (with the resultant chaos).
Dist-upgrade is tricky. It can go smoothly, or you can wind up with an
unusable machine. Just depends. On sunspots. My experience with
dist-upgrade is fraught with horror stories. I prefer to upgrade
subsystems one at a time. Debian can also have a tendency to show
conflicts when mass-upgrading like this. This package will conflict with
that package, and the only way to handle it is to
uninstall them both and attempt to reinstall them individually. Of
course, not all upgrades go that way. Yours might not.
Upgrading your distro could make your custom kernel prone to panics and
crashes. If your upgrade changes libraries (particularly the C
libraries), your kernel could be unstable when it runs. If your upgrade
is going to go anywhere near core libraries, I'd recommend recompiling
it. And building a script file to do this simply the next time you have
to. You don't have to worry so much about specific packages upgrading or
Gnome/KDE upgrades, but some of the other more basic libraries could do
you in on an upgrade.
Dang, am I a ray of sunshine or what? ;-}
Paul
-- Paul M. Foster ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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