Hi, all! I've now loaded Debian sarge on 3 machines and I'm extrordinarily happy with it. However, I have a question regarding upgrading a running system from stable to testing. The official Debian docs are slightly outdated (they talk about upgrading from potato to woody), and the information on doing this leaves a few bits out, so I just want to be sure I have this right.

From reading and experimenting, I've determined that the correct sequence of events is this:

1. Get stable up and running
2. Modify sources.list so it contains deb lines for both "stable" and "testing"
3. Create apt.conf, add a line in there setting the default distribution to "testing"
4. Create a preferences file containing the correct "pinnings" for stable and testing as described in the Debian docs
5. aptitude dist-upgrade

If, for example, I skip the step about creating apt.conf, "aptitude dist-upgrade" will simply ignore all the packages in testing, despite the pinnings in the preferences file.

I've done this twice now, on two different machines, and the procedure does seem to work just fine. I want to fully understand what's going on and why, though, so I'm hoping some of you more experienced Debian users can at least tell me "Yeah, you got it" or "No, you should be doing this," etc.

When I get home (I'm posting from work) I can provide the exact contents of sources.list, apt.conf and preferences if that will help.

Thanks!

Hi,
This is good but you can just do (after editing your sources.list)
#apt-get update
#apt-get dist-upgrade
and wait... ;-)
the apt.conf thing is not essential and is mostly useful when you want to use some package from testing while staying in stable...
However, I wanted to add something but it is *only* my personal view:
I would not advise you to upgrade to testing these days.. .wait a little... because sarge just got released and testing/unstable are going through are great deal of major transitions (ABI C++)... If I were you (but I'm not... ;-) ) I would wait some months and check regularly list.debian.org (when there is problems people talk about it really fast there)... to see when it begins to be better...
and as a last note (it is still *only* my personal view...) , before the release of sarge a lot of people where using testing because it was basically ready to be in stable and then the risks of having a real problem were actually really low... but that is true *only* just before a release... in regular situation I would not advise anyone to use testing, it is really for developers... If you want to go for something newer than stable and know enough debian upgrade to unstable (well you upgrade to testing and THEN unstable,...). It is safer than testing in many respects and the most important one is that in case of bug, problem of whatever the problem is corrected in unstable first and can take a lot more time to get into testing...
Hope this will help you ,
Good luck!
A.

Normally you'll want to upgrade apt first before doing dist-upgrade, but at the moment that's not really necessary since sarge and etch are still very similar. However, there will soon be a new version of apt (0.6) in sid and that brings some notable changes. Read more here: http://wiki.debian.net/?apt06

Oh, and you should install apt-listbugs if you're planning to track testing or unstable.

The new version of apt is already in sid. It updates quite a few packages including aptitude, but it also wants to remove kpackage.

Testing is pretty stable, sid isn't bad right now ; right after Sarge became stable sid was a mess.

Just make sure you install apt-listbugs.

Dammit, I knew I'd leave something out. I forgot that I did "aptitude update" before dist-upgrade.

If I have one complaint about Debian, it's that all their distribution names come from a stupid kids' movie. Heh... sid = whatever the current version of "unstable" is, yes?

In another thread I started a little while ago I asked for recommendations on unstable vs. testing, and the consensus seemed to be that I should stick with testing, as it tends to be more stable than unstable. I just basically want something that'll actually change with the times. If the Debian release team decides to wait another 4 years before the next stable release I don't want to be stuck in the dark ages. So now you've got me wondering again whether I should track unstable or testing. Don't things undergo some tests in unstable, then get moved to testing when they seem to work most of the time?

I did install apt-listbugs on one of my machines. I can certainly see why that would be handy.

Unstable(sid) is considered unstable because packages change rapidly sometimes with bad side-effects. Once the packages have moved into Testing (Etch) they may or may not have known bugs.

Like last time I checked I had over 300 updates waiting, about 1/5 have bugs or won't install. No biggy I just update the ones without bugs, sometimes you have to pin other apps because of dependency issues.

I would go with Testing if you want up to date programs without the worry of things breaking.

--That's it. In fact I thought for a while about begin tinkering w/sid. But I ended up thinking that was not the right thing for me, since my experience is not that long.

Besides it is often intended that Sid is "for people who like to live on the edge"....

Greetings.