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Re: Upgrading from very-old Debian

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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

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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

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