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

Groups > linux.debian.user > #189364 > unrolled thread

Upgrading from very-old Debian

Back to article view | Back to linux.debian.user

Contents

  Upgrading from very-old Debian The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2017-11-28 16:30 +0100
    Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2017-11-28 16:40 +0100
      Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2017-11-28 17:00 +0100
        Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2017-11-28 17:10 +0100
      Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2017-11-28 18:10 +0100
      Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2017-11-29 10:10 +0100
        Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-11-29 20:00 +0100
        Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2017-11-29 20:10 +0100
          Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian davidson <davidson@freevolt.org> - 2017-11-30 21:20 +0100
          Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2017-12-01 15:30 +0100
            Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2017-12-01 22:00 +0100
              Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian (and xtoolwait) David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2017-12-02 16:00 +0100
        Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Ric Moore <wayward4now@gmail.com> - 2017-11-29 21:30 +0100
    Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> - 2017-11-28 18:00 +0100
      Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2017-11-28 18:00 +0100
        Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Jimmy Johnson <field.engineer@gmail.com> - 2017-11-28 23:40 +0100
        Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Jan <jan@dwrox.net> - 2017-11-29 08:00 +0100
          Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Umarzuki Mochlis <umarzuki@gmail.com> - 2017-11-29 08:20 +0100
          Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Michael Fothergill <michael.fothergill@gmail.com> - 2017-11-29 08:50 +0100
    Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2017-11-28 20:30 +0100
      Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian Michael Fothergill <michael.fothergill@gmail.com> - 2017-11-28 21:30 +0100

Page 1 of 2  [1] 2  Next page →

#189364 — Upgrading from very-old Debian

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who consequently
can't upgrade to newer Debian.

I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of such
old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to oldoldoldstable,
then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to stable. However, I'm
stumped as to how to actually get started on doing that.

The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is still
available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones are more of
a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything prior to
oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its .deb files are
still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which doesn't really
suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade, because you'd have to
manually download all the correct .debs by hand and then install them
with dpkg.)

Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?

If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#189366

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 10:28:57AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
>I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
>oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who consequently
>can't upgrade to newer Debian.

It's easier to say the code name than oldoldoldoldodlodlsdosdld.

>I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of such
>old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to oldoldoldstable,
>then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to stable. However, I'm
>stumped as to how to actually get started on doing that.

The order of the releases is documented at 
https://www.debian.org/releases/

Basically, adjust the sources.list to point to each one in oder, and do 
the upgrades. Check the release notes for each upgrade to see if special 
steps are necessary.

>The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is still
>available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones are more of
>a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything prior to
>oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its .deb files are
>still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which doesn't really
>suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade, because you'd have to
>manually download all the correct .debs by hand and then install them
>with dpkg.)

Use archive.debian.org instead of ftp.debian.org or whatever for very 
old releases.

Mike Stone

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189368

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On 2017-11-28 at 10:34, Michael Stone wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 10:28:57AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian 
>> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who
>> consequently can't upgrade to newer Debian.
> 
> It's easier to say the code name than oldoldoldoldodlodlsdosdld.

Yeah, but I don't remember offhand which release had which codename, and
I couldn't be arsed to look it up when I had a name that would work just
as well. (Which happened to be the one she told it to me as.)

>> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of
>> such old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to
>> oldoldoldstable, then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to
>> stable. However, I'm stumped as to how to actually get started on
>> doing that.
> 
> The order of the releases is documented at
> https://www.debian.org/releases/
> 
> Basically, adjust the sources.list to point to each one in oder, and
> do the upgrades. Check the release notes for each upgrade to see if
> special steps are necessary.

That's the basic procedure for stepwise upgrades in general. It only
works when there's an available repository to point to, however, which
I thought was not the case for anything prior to oldoldstable.

>> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is
>> still available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones
>> are more of a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything
>> prior to oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its
>> .deb files are still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which
>> doesn't really suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade,
>> because you'd have to manually download all the correct .debs by
>> hand and then install them with dpkg.)
> 
> Use archive.debian.org instead of ftp.debian.org or whatever for very
> old releases.

Hm. I'd forgotten about that being available, if I'd ever known about it.

I'll pass that information on; thank you!

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189369

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 10:55:22AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2017-11-28 at 10:34, Michael Stone wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 10:28:57AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> > 
> >> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian 
> >> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who
> >> consequently can't upgrade to newer Debian.
> > 
> > It's easier to say the code name than oldoldoldoldodlodlsdosdld.
> 
> Yeah, but I don't remember offhand which release had which codename, and
> I couldn't be arsed to look it up when I had a name that would work just
> as well. (Which happened to be the one she told it to me as.)

As Michael said. Some more info also here:

  https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

Cheers
- -- t
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlodiegACgkQBcgs9XrR2kasUQCfe4PumE5Do6rbGdcTPnQywSkr
EmoAnjzoh9QV9Tse0+eEt111+J8F7dMC
=hUl5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189374

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 03:42:15PM +0000, Richard Zimmerman wrote:
>I'm pretty new to the Debian list here but over on the CentOS list I'm on, migrating from init system to systemd isn't for the faint of heart as I understand it.

Well, centos upgrades aren't a particularly useful indicator for how 
debian upgrades work. :)

Mike Stone

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189397

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 03:42:15PM +0000, Richard Zimmerman wrote:
> I'm pretty new to the Debian list here

Welcome aboard!

> but over on the CentOS list I'm on, migrating from init system to
> systemd isn't for the faint of heart as I understand it.

There's more of a culture of upgrade rather than reinstall in Debian
than in CentOS and family, in general. The systemd upgrade was handled
very well and was seamless for most people; however, someone upgrading
from such a long release ago is not something that will have been
thoroughly tested and it's quite possible that an old init script that
was modified (and therefore won't be replaced by package upgrades) could
come along for the ride and cause problems.

-- 

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189408

On 11/29/2017 01:01 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 03:42:15PM +0000, Richard Zimmerman wrote:
>> I'm pretty new to the Debian list here
> 
> Welcome aboard!
> 
>> but over on the CentOS list I'm on, migrating from init system to
>> systemd isn't for the faint of heart as I understand it.
> 
> There's more of a culture of upgrade rather than reinstall in Debian
> than in CentOS and family, in general. The systemd upgrade was handled
> very well and was seamless for most people; however, someone upgrading
> from such a long release ago is not something that will have been
> thoroughly tested and it's quite possible that an old init script that
> was modified (and therefore won't be replaced by package upgrades) could
> come along for the ride and cause problems.

Hi Jonathan, and that's the reason I would choose Wheezy as the target 
to upgrade to where the only thing sys.d is login.d and there's not a 
lot of plasma to deal with.

But I'm the weird guy who thinks upgrading is mostly always a fun 
learning experience where I get to use the tools Debian has given me, 
synaptic, apt, aptitude, dpkg, upgrade-system, gtkorphan, etc.

Cheers!
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

KDE Plasma 5.8.7 - AMD A8-7600 - EXT4 at sda2
Registered Linux User #380263

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189410

Jonathan Dowland wrote:

> however, someone upgrading
> from such a long release ago is not something that will have been
> thoroughly tested and it's quite possible that an old init script that
> was modified (and therefore won't be replaced by package upgrades) could
> come along for the ride and cause problems.

The release and upgrade notes are sufficient they state upgrade to next
release and then to next release. I had few problems from wheezy to lenny,
but almost no problem from lenny to stretch.

Just follow the upgrade instructions for each release going to the next

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189435

On Wed, 29 Nov 2017, deloptes wrote:

> Jonathan Dowland wrote:
>
>> however, someone upgrading
>> from such a long release ago is not something that will have been
>> thoroughly tested and it's quite possible that an old init script that
>> was modified (and therefore won't be replaced by package upgrades) could
>> come along for the ride and cause problems.
>
> The release and upgrade notes are sufficient they state upgrade to next
> release and then to next release. I had few problems from wheezy to lenny,

Heh, I'll bet you did.

> but almost no problem from lenny to stretch.

Whoa. The magic touch!

> Just follow the upgrade instructions for each release going to the next

And make sure you're actually going to the *next* release.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189440

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 08:06:10PM +0100, deloptes wrote:
>The release and upgrade notes are sufficient they state upgrade to next
>release and then to next release.

Non-the-less, it's not something that many people will have attempted,
and there are quite likely to be things that might slip through the net.
Not just things within the Debian ecosystem: a machine running Lenny was
presumably installed in or around 2009, so there's nearly 9 years worth
of local sysadmin changes that might have been made.

> I had few problems from wheezy to lenny,

That would be downgrading by two releases. That's bound to be
troublesome.

>but almost no problem from lenny to stretch.

That's the path that OP's friend would be attempting (as lenny is
currently oldoldoldoldstable). I'm glad it worked for you, but I would
still not recommend it to anyone else.

-- 

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189454

Jonathan Dowland wrote:

> Non-the-less, it's not something that many people will have attempted,
> and there are quite likely to be things that might slip through the net.
> Not just things within the Debian ecosystem: a machine running Lenny was
> presumably installed in or around 2009, so there's nearly 9 years worth
> of local sysadmin changes that might have been made.
> 
>> I had few problems from wheezy to lenny,
> 
> That would be downgrading by two releases. That's bound to be
> troublesome.
> 
>>but almost no problem from lenny to stretch.
> 
> That's the path that OP's friend would be attempting (as lenny is
> currently oldoldoldoldstable). I'm glad it worked for you, but I would
> still not recommend it to anyone else.

Aah sorry, I moved from lenny to squeeze then I moved partially to wheezy
last year before squeeze got obsolated and this year I moved to stretch in
one day, doing wheezy -> jessie and jessie -> stretch.

So the problem was squeeze -> wheezy

regards

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189466 — Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian (and xtoolwait)

On Fri 01 Dec 2017 at 21:52:33 (+0100), deloptes wrote:
> Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> 
> > Non-the-less, it's not something that many people will have attempted,
> > and there are quite likely to be things that might slip through the net.
> > Not just things within the Debian ecosystem: a machine running Lenny was
> > presumably installed in or around 2009, so there's nearly 9 years worth
> > of local sysadmin changes that might have been made.
> > 
> >> I had few problems from wheezy to lenny,
> > 
> > That would be downgrading by two releases. That's bound to be
> > troublesome.
> > 
> >>but almost no problem from lenny to stretch.
> > 
> > That's the path that OP's friend would be attempting (as lenny is
> > currently oldoldoldoldstable). I'm glad it worked for you, but I would
> > still not recommend it to anyone else.
> 
> Aah sorry, I moved from lenny to squeeze then I moved partially to wheezy
> last year before squeeze got obsolated and this year I moved to stretch in
> one day, doing wheezy -> jessie and jessie -> stretch.
> 
> So the problem was squeeze -> wheezy

My only negative recollections there are:

a) I played safe on this very old laptop and upgraded to a 486 kernel
(3.2.0-4-486 IIRC) because of the necessity for pae in 686 versions.

b) I've still found no replacement for xtoolwait which was last
available in squeeze (version 1.3-6.2). It's the only thing that
ensures all the xterms appear in their correct places when starting
X. But I have to have a workaround for a bug where it sometimes
sticks around and consumes most of the CPU cycles, typically while
starting xclock. I just put the following line early on in .xsession

( sleep 60; pgrep xtoolwait; pkill xtoolwait ) &

Cheers,
David.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189412

On 11/29/2017 04:01 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 03:42:15PM +0000, Richard Zimmerman wrote:
>> I'm pretty new to the Debian list here
> 
> Welcome aboard!
> 
>> but over on the CentOS list I'm on, migrating from init system to
>> systemd isn't for the faint of heart as I understand it.
> 
> There's more of a culture of upgrade rather than reinstall in Debian
> than in CentOS and family, in general. The systemd upgrade was handled
> very well and was seamless for most people; however, someone upgrading
> from such a long release ago is not something that will have been
> thoroughly tested and it's quite possible that an old init script that
> was modified (and therefore won't be replaced by package upgrades) could
> come along for the ride and cause problems.

I keep /opt on a separate partition. In have a subdirectory there as 
/opt/ric
Next I copy -raf .mozilla there and then .thunderbird, Pictures, Videos, 
Documents, Downloads, Music, ...etc. just don't copy everything, as oy 
want fresh .config files when you install fresh. At install time, do not 
reformat your /opt partition. When you reboot into your fresh install, 
delete all those desktop directories and create links to your /opt 
directory locations. Now you can destroy your install root partition and 
be back up in business with minimal fuss. I've been doing this since the 
old Caldera days. Works a bloody charm.Ric


-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189372

On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:28:57 -0500 The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who consequently
> can't upgrade to newer Debian.
> 
> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of
> such old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to
> oldoldoldstable, then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to
> stable. However, I'm stumped as to how to actually get started on
> doing that.
> 
> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is still
> available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones are more
> of a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything prior to
> oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its .deb files
> are still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which doesn't
> really suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade, because you'd
> have to manually download all the correct .debs by hand and then
> install them with dpkg.)
> 
> Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
> upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?
> 
> If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?

Save yourself time and lots of problems, back up your data and do a
clean install of the current Debian release.

To do what you want requires dist-upgrading each release, in
order, one-at-a-time, then troubleshooting each dist-upgrade once
done with no guarantees it will work.  Be sure to read and explicitly
follow the dist-upgrade instructions in the Release Notes for each
release. Many times there are special things that must be done. Just
dist-upgrading from your current old install to Stretch, skipping all
those inbetween is "not recommended," meaning it won't work.

Good Luck

B

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189373

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On 2017-11-28 at 11:53, Patrick Bartek wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:28:57 -0500 The Wanderer
> <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
>> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
>> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who
>> consequently can't upgrade to newer Debian.
>> 
>> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of
>> such old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to
>> oldoldoldstable, then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to
>> stable. However, I'm stumped as to how to actually get started on
>> doing that.
>> 
>> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is
>> still available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones
>> are more of a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything
>> prior to oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its
>> .deb files are still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which
>> doesn't really suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade,
>> because you'd have to manually download all the correct .debs by
>> hand and then install them with dpkg.)
>> 
>> Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
>> upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?
>> 
>> If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?
> 
> Save yourself time and lots of problems, back up your data and do a
> clean install of the current Debian release.

A: This isn't me, this is someone I encountered.

B: That's not always a viable option, depending on the circumstances.
It's probably the easier option when it is viable, but that doesn't mean
it should be the only option considered, for cases when something else
may be more viable.

> To do what you want requires dist-upgrading each release, in order,
> one-at-a-time, then troubleshooting each dist-upgrade once done with
> no guarantees it will work.

Yes, of course. That's established procedure, and it's entirely
reasonable to expect people to follow it. (Is there any reason it
shouldn't work, when it worked for people at the time when those
releases were made?)

> Be sure to read and explicitly follow the dist-upgrade instructions
> in the Release Notes for each release. Many times there are special
> things that must be done. Just dist-upgrading from your current old
> install to Stretch, skipping all those inbetween is "not
> recommended," meaning it won't work.

Of course. That's exactly why accessible repositories containing those
older releases are needed; my question was about how / where to manage
those, and that was answered in the first reply.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189383

On 11/28/2017 08:58 AM, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2017-11-28 at 11:53, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:28:57 -0500 The Wanderer
>> <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>
>>> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
>>> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who
>>> consequently can't upgrade to newer Debian.
>>>
>>> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of
>>> such old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to
>>> oldoldoldstable, then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to
>>> stable. However, I'm stumped as to how to actually get started on
>>> doing that.
>>>
>>> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is
>>> still available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones
>>> are more of a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything
>>> prior to oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its
>>> .deb files are still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which
>>> doesn't really suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade,
>>> because you'd have to manually download all the correct .debs by
>>> hand and then install them with dpkg.)
>>>
>>> Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
>>> upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?
>>>
>>> If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?
>>
>> Save yourself time and lots of problems, back up your data and do a
>> clean install of the current Debian release.
> 
> A: This isn't me, this is someone I encountered.
> 
> B: That's not always a viable option, depending on the circumstances.
> It's probably the easier option when it is viable, but that doesn't mean
> it should be the only option considered, for cases when something else
> may be more viable.

And all the fun you could have too. is the system running? Can you 
currently apt-get update?

If nothing else you can always delete the system and the system files in 
home too saving home and do a new install with no format of root.

I would go to whezzy for the upgrade and unless you have active repos to 
your current install all your packages will orphaned, that don't help, 
but with the whezzy repos make sure you don't lose your internet 
connection or all will be lost and or make it harder to do the upgrade.

Upgrade linux-image, linux-headers and apt, aptitude, net-tools, 
firmware-linux, xorg, grub, etc. Stay away from meta-packages as much as 
you can and some applications you may want to start by upgrading the 
lib-common package first. Installing synaptic after xorg could help and 
from the command line using package 'upgrade-system' can help, but first 
thing is to get the base going. And remember to have fun!

>> To do what you want requires dist-upgrading each release, in order,
>> one-at-a-time, then troubleshooting each dist-upgrade once done with
>> no guarantees it will work.
> 
> Yes, of course. That's established procedure, and it's entirely
> reasonable to expect people to follow it. (Is there any reason it
> shouldn't work, when it worked for people at the time when those
> releases were made?)
> 
>> Be sure to read and explicitly follow the dist-upgrade instructions
>> in the Release Notes for each release. Many times there are special
>> things that must be done. Just dist-upgrading from your current old
>> install to Stretch, skipping all those inbetween is "not
>> recommended," meaning it won't work.
> 
> Of course. That's exactly why accessible repositories containing those
> older releases are needed; my question was about how / where to manage
> those, and that was answered in the first reply.

Cheers!
-- 
Jimmy Johnson

KDE Plasma 5.8.7 - AMD A8-7600 - EXT4 at sda2
Registered Linux User #380263

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189392

On 28.11.2017 17:58, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2017-11-28 at 11:53, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:28:57 -0500 The Wanderer
>> <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>
>>> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
>>> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who
>>> consequently can't upgrade to newer Debian.
>>>
>>> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of
>>> such old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to
>>> oldoldoldstable, then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to
>>> stable. However, I'm stumped as to how to actually get started on
>>> doing that.
>>>
>>> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is
>>> still available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones
>>> are more of a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything
>>> prior to oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its
>>> .deb files are still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which
>>> doesn't really suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade,
>>> because you'd have to manually download all the correct .debs by
>>> hand and then install them with dpkg.)
>>>
>>> Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
>>> upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?
>>>
>>> If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?
>>
>> Save yourself time and lots of problems, back up your data and do a
>> clean install of the current Debian release.
> 
> A: This isn't me, this is someone I encountered.
> 
> B: That's not always a viable option, depending on the circumstances.
> It's probably the easier option when it is viable, but that doesn't mean
> it should be the only option considered, for cases when something else
> may be more viable.
> 
>> To do what you want requires dist-upgrading each release, in order,
>> one-at-a-time, then troubleshooting each dist-upgrade once done with
>> no guarantees it will work.
> 
> Yes, of course. That's established procedure, and it's entirely
> reasonable to expect people to follow it. (Is there any reason it
> shouldn't work, when it worked for people at the time when those
> releases were made?)
> 
>> Be sure to read and explicitly follow the dist-upgrade instructions
>> in the Release Notes for each release. Many times there are special
>> things that must be done. Just dist-upgrading from your current old
>> install to Stretch, skipping all those inbetween is "not
>> recommended," meaning it won't work.
> 
> Of course. That's exactly why accessible repositories containing those
> older releases are needed; my question was about how / where to manage
> those, and that was answered in the first reply.
> 

As a friendly recommendation:
If it was about me, I would encourage to backup the home directories as 
well as mail or similar, depending what other kind of services running 
under the particular system.

Backup the data to an external usb drive or the whole source drive if 
you are keen on that, for example. Then do a "clean" install of a new 
system on the original drive. Otherwise you might run into issues, where 
you might miss out on an important package, if you snapshot upgrade one 
by one.

Running such a old and obsolete system is not only a security risk, but 
also in other areas where improvements has been made, you miss out on a 
lot. This was not the question of course, but it simply doesn't make 
much sense to keep such an old operating system around which is not even 
actively supported by documentation or people likewise anymore.

And it might not simply be worth the hassle to upgrade step by step, 
possible breaking something in the process and troubleshoot why one 
package depends on another or crippling other services, having obsolete 
folders or even configuration files and settings laying around, which 
are not needed anymore. As stated by other people here, it might and 
perhaps will, take much longer time to troubleshoot everything or simply 
end up to be impossible to do correctly.

Better clean and start from scratch install with a known supported 
installation.
Ensure just to backup mail(dirs), mail, .ssh, .config or similar folders 
in "home" (or better the whole home folders" or "var" or other locations 
which might contain data you need. Or "etc" for configuration settings - 
but "etc" content, might and will most likely have changed dramatically 
depending on what was installed previously.

To backup the software list of what was installed on the system, I would 
use something like an "apt list | grep installed" and pipe the output 
into a file. But for "apt-get" this does not seem to be an option, so 
perhaps theres another way to get a list of installed packages using 
dpkg or such, I'm just not aware of that.
This way, you can then, after some cleanup in an editor for example, 
pipe the output of listed installed packages into the new system 
apt/apt-get and reinstall as available in the repository everything that 
was installed earlier, most likely.

Of course, after the home directories have been created accordingly 
using add user and copy and paste selectively from home to home of the 
backup media.

Good luck!

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189394

2017-11-29 14:45 GMT+08:00 Jan <jan@dwrox.net>:
>
>
> On 28.11.2017 17:58, The Wanderer wrote:
>>
>> On 2017-11-28 at 11:53, Patrick Bartek wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:28:57 -0500 The Wanderer
>>> <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
>>>> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who
>>>> consequently can't upgrade to newer Debian.
>>>>
>>>> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of
>>>> such old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to
>>>> oldoldoldstable, then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to
>>>> stable. However, I'm stumped as to how to actually get started on
>>>> doing that.
>>>>
>>>> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is
>>>> still available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones
>>>> are more of a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything
>>>> prior to oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its
>>>> .deb files are still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which
>>>> doesn't really suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade,
>>>> because you'd have to manually download all the correct .debs by
>>>> hand and then install them with dpkg.)
>>>>
>>>> Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
>>>> upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?
>>>>
>>>> If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?
>>>
>>>
>>> Save yourself time and lots of problems, back up your data and do a
>>> clean install of the current Debian release.
>>
>>
>> A: This isn't me, this is someone I encountered.
>>
>> B: That's not always a viable option, depending on the circumstances.
>> It's probably the easier option when it is viable, but that doesn't mean
>> it should be the only option considered, for cases when something else
>> may be more viable.
>>
>>> To do what you want requires dist-upgrading each release, in order,
>>> one-at-a-time, then troubleshooting each dist-upgrade once done with
>>> no guarantees it will work.
>>
>>
>> Yes, of course. That's established procedure, and it's entirely
>> reasonable to expect people to follow it. (Is there any reason it
>> shouldn't work, when it worked for people at the time when those
>> releases were made?)
>>
>>> Be sure to read and explicitly follow the dist-upgrade instructions
>>> in the Release Notes for each release. Many times there are special
>>> things that must be done. Just dist-upgrading from your current old
>>> install to Stretch, skipping all those inbetween is "not
>>> recommended," meaning it won't work.
>>
>>
>> Of course. That's exactly why accessible repositories containing those
>> older releases are needed; my question was about how / where to manage
>> those, and that was answered in the first reply.
>>
>
> As a friendly recommendation:
> If it was about me, I would encourage to backup the home directories as well
> as mail or similar, depending what other kind of services running under the
> particular system.
>
> Backup the data to an external usb drive or the whole source drive if you
> are keen on that, for example. Then do a "clean" install of a new system on
> the original drive. Otherwise you might run into issues, where you might
> miss out on an important package, if you snapshot upgrade one by one.
>
> Running such a old and obsolete system is not only a security risk, but also
> in other areas where improvements has been made, you miss out on a lot. This
> was not the question of course, but it simply doesn't make much sense to
> keep such an old operating system around which is not even actively
> supported by documentation or people likewise anymore.
>
> And it might not simply be worth the hassle to upgrade step by step,
> possible breaking something in the process and troubleshoot why one package
> depends on another or crippling other services, having obsolete folders or
> even configuration files and settings laying around, which are not needed
> anymore. As stated by other people here, it might and perhaps will, take
> much longer time to troubleshoot everything or simply end up to be
> impossible to do correctly.
>
> Better clean and start from scratch install with a known supported
> installation.
> Ensure just to backup mail(dirs), mail, .ssh, .config or similar folders in
> "home" (or better the whole home folders" or "var" or other locations which
> might contain data you need. Or "etc" for configuration settings - but "etc"
> content, might and will most likely have changed dramatically depending on
> what was installed previously.
>
> To backup the software list of what was installed on the system, I would use
> something like an "apt list | grep installed" and pipe the output into a
> file. But for "apt-get" this does not seem to be an option, so perhaps
> theres another way to get a list of installed packages using dpkg or such,
> I'm just not aware of that.
> This way, you can then, after some cleanup in an editor for example, pipe
> the output of listed installed packages into the new system apt/apt-get and
> reinstall as available in the repository everything that was installed
> earlier, most likely.
>
> Of course, after the home directories have been created accordingly using
> add user and copy and paste selectively from home to home of the backup
> media.
>
> Good luck!
>


I recommend doing P2V (creating a virtual machine straight from
physical machine) using VMware Converter so you can try upgrading
inside VMware Workstation or something similar.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189395

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

>
>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>> As a friendly recommendation:
> If it was about me, I would encourage to backup the home directories as
> well as mail or similar, depending what other kind of services running
> under the particular system.
>
> Backup the data to an external usb drive or the whole source drive if you
> are keen on that, for example. Then do a "clean" install of a new system on
> the original drive. Otherwise you might run into issues, where you might
> miss out on an important package, if you snapshot upgrade one by one.
>

​I agree here.  Forget about rummaging through the last 5 years of
Icelandic telephone directories; phooey to creating a cyclical re-run of
the monolith scene from 2001 space odyssey, let the romantic notion of
upgrading from the operating system of an ancient Egyptian abacus to a yet
to be constructed quantum computer wither and fade away............

And back up your work files etc and

reinstall stretch "Jessieson"

​and sing the title track song from the sound of music NOT the one about
climbing every mountain etc.

​Why bother?

Cheers

MF

​

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#189376

On Tue 28 Nov 2017 at 10:28:57 (-0500), The Wanderer wrote:
> I've run across someone who says her machine is running Debian
> oldoldoldstable or maybe even oldoldoldoldstable, and who consequently
> can't upgrade to newer Debian.
> 
> I seem to recall that there *is* a way to do step-wise upgrades of such
> old systems, i.e. upgrading from oldoldoldoldstable to oldoldoldstable,
> then to oldoldstable, then to oldstable, then to stable. However, I'm
> stumped as to how to actually get started on doing that.
> 
> The last few steps of this are straightforward; oldoldstable is still
> available in the repos, as far as I'm aware. The first ones are more of
> a problem; if I understand matters correctly, anything prior to
> oldoldstable is removed from the live repos, although its .deb files are
> still maintained on e.g. snapshot.debian.org. (Which doesn't really
> suffice for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade, because you'd have to
> manually download all the correct .debs by hand and then install them
> with dpkg.)
> 
> Is there in fact a way to manage the first steps of this stepwise
> upgrade, from one aged-out-of-the-repos release to another?
> 
> If so, any pointers to information on how to go about it?

If and when you upgrade oldoldoldoldstable (lenny) to oldoldoldstable
(squeeze), upgrade the kernel and check the firmware is all there
before you upgrade udev. That's the only tricky one, AFAIK.

Cheers,
David.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

Page 1 of 2  [1] 2  Next page →

Back to top | Article view | linux.debian.user

csiph-web