Upgrading Slackware 13.37 to current.
 

The last time I attempted to upgrade a Slackware distribution ISO into the current tree I ended up with a lot of errors that were unwanted and such. Is there any real way other than downloading the entire package list of the Current tree and creating a custom ISO, to turn a 13.37 or any release, into a Current tree using distro without too many errors?

Edit: Nevermind found it.

You mean upgrading to the current patch levels of packages? Just do a slackpkg ugrade-all. It'll give you a menu of all available upgrades and you have the option of unchecking any you don't want.

edit: I just saw your edit. lol

Yeah I found Eric's post about using rsync so I'll have a look into it. If all else fails I can grab my FTP software and rip the entire slackware64-current directory overnight then using the isolinux folder instructions to generate my own ISO.

Can you not just choose one of the slackware-current mirrors from /etc/slackpkg/mirrors, then do a slackpkg update, and slackpkg upgrade-all? As far as I know I'm totally current with the -current tree using this method.

You also can use AlienBob's script mirror-slackware-current.sh for that, it will mirror the current-tree to your harddisk and create an iso from it. Just edit it to create a DVD (it makes CDROMs by default) or use the appropriate command line options (you can start the script with the -h option to see all command-line options).

I guess my biggest question here... Forgive me if I sound ignorant... But why go through that trouble instead of just using slackpkg? I mean, if you specifically wanted to make a disc I'd understand... But if you're just looking to keep your system current with the tree, is there an advantage to that method?

I'm curious as well but the last time I did that Slackware had errors out the ying-yang. I'm guessing that because so much is updated, that various components just can not relink or run correctly.

I've already started pulling the current 64bit packages for an ISO. I've heard -current can have issues at times, but it's always being updated and once you get a copy up and running, you don't really have to grab/make another ISO ever again unless you want to for emergency purposes, just run slackpkg regularly.

I guess I can see that. I'm fortunate. So far I'm error free.

To upgrade from previous versions of slackware this works

1. Edit slackpkg.mirrors to point at mirror of version to upgrade
2. Run "slackpkg update" "slackpkg upgrade tgz" "slackpkg install tgz"
3. Edit you slackpkg.mirrors again and slackpkg.blacklist to allow updating of aaa_elflibs
4. slackpkg install-new
5. slackpkg upgrade-all
6. Depending on version upgrading from may need to edit /etc/fstab to reflect the change in naming of ide drives from hda to sda if you have ide drives.
7. rerun liloconfig