I run a home network of Slackware boxes and have successfully upgraded my LAMP server, my DNSMASQ/SQUID/IPTABLES Slackware based router and a workstation from Slackware 11 to 12 (N.B. upgraded not fresh installed). Now I have my last workstation to upgrade from 11 to 12 but I have been holding this off as this box is my main development box running A LOT of compiled packages, i.e. eric, eclipse, pygtk, wxpython, sqlalchemy, etc.. Some of these packages/libraries took a lot of time and effort to get working. Given that Slack 12 comes with a different version of GLIBC I am worried that the upgrade may kill a lot of my previously compiled packages/libraries.

Is there any way I can boot to Slack12 and test my existing packages to see if I can safely upgrade without having to recompile/rebuild a LOT of packages ? (A lot of these run under KDE/QT3). I don't want to blindly upgrade only to find my existing configuration blows up ! ( I have been giving this much thought but can't see a way of doing this safely without taking the plunge!) Obviously I can boot the Slack 12 DVD but then I need to check that my custom spps/libs/etc work OK with the new glib version.

Maybe this is a stupid question but I assume changing the C libraries can have fatal effects with dynamically loadable/shared libraries and apps built under a different version.

Any wisdom is much appreciated !!

if you have another box, then try to install 12.0 on it and install your custom application to check whether it will work or not. It's like a shadow-testing-box. I think it's the best solution for now

Thanks for the reply. I thought of doing this and so far this is the only solution I can come up with. There are a LOT of these custom apps,libraries etc. and so it looks like I've got my work cut out - oh well. Thanks again.

Bgeddy,

Do you have a compelling reason to upgrade from 11 to 12 on that computer? I decided not to upgrade my Slackware 11 computer because it's running just fine without the new features. I also have a bunch of software compiled on that machine, and the thought of potentially recompiling it (if my existing packages don't work) was too much of a bummer.

Just some thoughts...

-Drew

Lufbery : Great minds think alike - as the say !

I have spent today pondering on this and finally decided that - at the moment anyway - this is too much work and too risky. For now I will keep this box at Slack 11 as it works well for me. Obviously at some stage I will upgrade but in the mean time I can be testing my compiled apps/libs under slack12.

Possibly I could NFS mount the appropriate Slack11 directories to a Slack12 box and try running them - however I can see this causing problems with dependent libraries. I just hope that nothing trips me up when i do "bite the bullet".

Should something go fatally wrong post update I suppose I could downgrade back to Slack11 - reversing the upgrade.txt steps or possibly following the Slackware 11 upgrade.txt to downgrade Slackware 12.

Thanks again..