Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > alt.os.linux.debian > #7498

Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)?

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

Show all headers | View raw

On 20 Dec 2015, Ant wrote:

> Oops. I messed up in my body text. I meant to say "With my almost 1.5 
> weeks Christmas 2015 break coming up, I think it is time to finally 
> upgrade (not a clean install?) my old Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to 
> stable (Jessie) ..." I am already at oldstable/Wheezy.

That doesn't sound too bad then. You seem to have a good amount of disk
space available, just read through the release notes carefully, there
are passages about things like purging removed packages to get rid of
old init scripts. It's not difficult, it's just good to know about it
all. My wheezy to jessie upgrades have gone generally quite well.

>> And you do not have to use full systemd on Jessie, but stay with
>> SysVInit as provided by systemd-sysv (which is what I am using
>> on two Jessie systems -- Debian 8.2).
>
> Oh. I thought Debian stable was forcing everyone off SysVInit to SystemD 
> like other Linux OSes. :/

In the longer term, who knows how viable avoiding SystemD will be? Other
software seems to be increasingly assuming that it is now the way to
offer various functionality, just like we started having to use apulse
because applications began to assume pulseaudio. In jessie, a
SysVInit-based system remains quite workable. Though, I'm not using
GNOME anywhere, I don't know how it is from there: remember that SystemD
is more than just an init system: a lot depends on if you just don't
want to use it for starting daemons, or if you really want as little
trace of it on your system as possible. There might be small issues in
some desktop environments, in things like automounting flash drives for
users or offering a working power-down button to them, but I haven't run
into anything too major, it's just the kind of stuff you should test out
to see if it still works. In my limited experience, many of the issues
seem solvable simply by installing the right non-obvious package. It's
all a bit too much of a confusing twisty maze for me to figure out why
some things stopped working -- the whole ecosystem with cgmanager and
polkit and whatnot in there is frankly a bit opaque to me, even given
the logging -- but a non-SystemD jessie system is certainly viable if
you don't mind doing things the old, manual way while you figure some
new things out. My main outstanding puzzle is actually on a SystemD
system so I can't blame its absence!

I don't know how much momentum/activity Devuan has but I still don't
think it's anywhere near ready for prime-time. I'd say, read the release
notes, take a full backup, then go ahead, do the upgrade, reboot, and
test jessie out right away. If something does stop working and you can't
figure it out (which is unlikely given that probably others ran into it
by now and you can google their solutions) you can always restore from
backup, but you'll probably be able to get it working well enough if you
don't mind having at least some systemd-related libraries around.

-- Mark

Back to alt.os.linux.debian | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-19 13:34 -0600
  Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2015-12-19 22:40 +0000
    Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-19 20:00 -0600
      Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? Mark Carroll <mtbc@ixod.org> - 2015-12-20 10:22 +0000
  Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? yamo' <yamo@beurdin.invalid> - 2015-12-20 10:06 +0100
    Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-21 00:20 -0600
      Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? yamo' <yamo@beurdin.invalid> - 2015-12-21 10:20 +0100
        Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-21 21:49 -0600
          Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2015-12-22 16:35 +0000
            Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-22 14:35 -0600
              Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2015-12-22 23:56 +0000
                Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-23 19:44 -0600
                Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2015-12-24 12:58 +0000
  Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? Solbu <solbu@solbu.net> - 2015-12-28 16:10 +0100
    Re: Anything I should worry about before upgrading my Debian oldstable (Wheezy) to stable (Jessie)? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2015-12-29 01:51 -0600

csiph-web