Hello Everyone,

Now that I have Etch installed and running superb, I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade to Lenny without a complete new install. I have been reading the forum posts about this and it appears that I might be able to do it by changing my sources.list to testing. However, I have studied a number of these examples and they have a mixture of sources that I don't totally understand. My current sources.list is pretty simple:

Would someone mind telling me which sources to use to attempt this upgrade?
I would like some multimedia as well (for DVD playing, etc.). I am using my Debian installation for learning purposes so extreme stability is not necessary.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Regards

Bob

All you need to do is replace all the instances of "etch" with "lenny" in your /etc/apt/sources.lst.

Give commands:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade


And you will be automagically in Lenny.

Lenny is presently Debian's testing distribution. This means that it will change and update more frequently over the next year until it's ready for release. Having said that, testing is 'generally' quiet stable but a sudden influx of updates can skew things a little.

I guess if you enjoy reconfiguring things and sorting out the occasional problem then it might be exactly what you want. However, is that the reason for the upgrade or is it more related to your additional request for DVD and multimedia support?

Looking at your sources list (and assuming your in the UK) then you'd be better off with this;

Firstly you don't need your reference to us.debian.org as all those extra packages are in the UK mirror as well; so I've amalgamated them together. It keeps your sources list a little cleaner and reduces traffic.

Secondly I've added the debian-multimedia repository. It's run by one of the Debian maintainers as an extra repository dealing with a lot of the patent influenced and proprietary multimedia software that can't go into the main Debian repositories. This includes things like DVD, Real and Windows codecs. I use it all the time and it's well worth it.

Having said all that, if really want to upgrade to Testing then change your sources list to;

Again you get the extra multimedia codec support. Once you've changed your sources list do the following as root;

followed by;

If you just do a normal apt-get upgrade you'll be stuck somewhere in between the two. So make sure it's a dist-upgrade.

After a lot of downloading and some package reconfiguration you'll be in testing. Keep in mind that going backwards isn't really possible and testing has the slowest of security updates out of all the Debian versions (if any at all).

Hope that helps a little and let us know if it works out. And honestly I'm not sat at work bored as hell

Hello, and thanks, redgoblin. I have changed my sources.list to your suggestion. Actually, I suppose I am rethinking moving to Lenny after reading your post and others. While it may be more up-to-date, my whole purpose in installing Debian is to re-learn what I have forgotten about Linux (been away for over two years.) I guess in reality I don't need to upgrade to Lenny to learn. My thinking was that if I break things using a more unstable version, the fixing process would be my learning experience.

Little by little, it's coming back to me. I have two other "easy" distros installed, along with Fedora, which updates almost daily so it's definitely cutting edge. I wanted to Debian to study a more "pure" linux. Etch should be enough to do that. Your multimedia source is terrific, as I do occasionally want to watch a commercial DVD on my computer. So, I have tons of books and tutorials, I guess I'm set!

Thanks again

Bob

I know this has been said on these forums ad nauseum but, if you want to study a "more pure" Linux and learn Linux rapidly, then the distro sans pareil has got to be Slackware. I learnt more in two months using Slackware than in two years with Suse. So if you've got room for another distro that would be the way I'd go.

Thanks for your comment, mikieboy, but I tried installing Slack. I used Slack a couple of years ago and loved it. Unfortunately, it would not install on my machine. I tried five separate times and sought help on the forum, but no go. Kept getting "Disk Error 32", which I understand to be an install "size" parameter. Wasn't a bad burn because it worked on my friends laptop.

I did save a partition for Slack, but I will have to wait for the next release. This one just won't work for me.

Regards

Bob