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Sid will give you a lot of insight on how Debian and apt work. One word of caution never use apt-get dist-upgrade or aptitude full-upgrade. half your system could get ripped out because something has missing dependencies. If you must see what is being held back with apt-get safe-upgrade or aptitude upgrade then ' aptitude full-upgrade -s ' will let you play but never install or remove anything. Also with Sid you should ' aptitude update && aptitude upgrade ' at least twice a week. Some do it two or three times a day but twice a week should be fine for most people.
Hope you enjoy your new install.
Suggested reading:
man dpkg
man dpkg-reconfigure
man apt-get
man aptitude
all the time, and never had problems. Well: no unusual ones.
Quote:
apt-get safe-upgrade or aptitude upgrade
It's the other way around.
Anyway: keeping the system up to date and using the simulate switch: -s; both described by 62chevy, sure helps a lot.
I wouldn't expect too much by running Sid. It still is Debian: stable as a rock.
This is because packages can vanish from testing for various reasons (usually due to critical bugs in related packages in unstable) a full dist-upgrade might remove a package (or several) that you want, whereas a normal upgrade will hold off upgrading any related packages if it means removing the package you might want. In short, upgrade performs the updates without removing anything, dist-upgrade tries to upgrade every single package on the system even if it means removing stuff.
Despite this it's still a good idea to try and dist-upgrade testing once any issues regarding missing packages have resolved themselves in order to keep it as up to date as possible, or better yet to install the missing package from Sid and then dist-upgrade the whole system.
This is because packages can vanish from testing for various reasons (usually due to critical bugs in related packages in unstable) a full dist-upgrade might remove a package (or several) that you want, whereas a normal upgrade will hold off upgrading any related packages if it means removing the package you might want. In short, upgrade performs the updates without removing anything, dist-upgrade tries to upgrade every single package on the system even if it means removing stuff.
Despite this it's still a good idea to try and dist-upgrade testing once any issues regarding missing packages have resolved themselves in order to keep it as up to date as possible, or better yet to install the missing package from Sid and then dist-upgrade the whole system.
This is absolutely right.
I prefer apt-get (aptitude has some features that can really make life a lot easier too) and I use dist-upgrade everyday here on my production OS Debian testing.
I do not have to choose to let it proceed. I also have apt-listbugs installed.
For ANY package management tool to work, the person in the chair really needs to read what comes up and think about it. Have I really been screwed using dist-upgrade? Yes, I either didn't read or didn't think about what I read before hitting the Y command. That was not the fault of the tool. That was the fault of an idiot using the tool.
I prefer apt-get (aptitude has some features that can really make life a lot easier too) and I use dist-upgrade everyday here on my production OS Debian testing.
I do not have to choose to let it proceed. I also have apt-listbugs installed.
For ANY package management tool to work, the person in the chair really needs to read what comes up and think about it. Have I really been screwed using dist-upgrade? Yes, I either didn't read or didn't think about what I read before hitting the Y command. That was not the fault of the tool. That was the fault of an idiot using the tool.
Thanks you made my point for me. Read first act later. I've had half of Gnome ripped out by using ' aptitude full-upgrade ' in Sid so now I only use it with the -s option and check on stuff I'm not sure about.
Right now I have xorg-xserver pinned so nvidia drivers will work correctly. full-upgrade would change that and upgrade leaves it as is.
Ran sid since 2004, more or less daily I do apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade -yd
Then if nothing is being removed after the download finishes I do apt-get dist-upgrade.
Just doing apt-get upgrade is a good way to run into problems.
upgrade/safe-upgrade is more for stable.
Okay yes to everything and download only will work then you can install what you want with dpkg -i or just run it again without the -yd.
I get the same results just differently and prefer aptitude over apt-get for no other reason than that is what I'm used to and know best. Old habits die hard even when the Release Notes said apt-get was the preferred way to upgrade Lenny to Squeeze.
Distribution: Debian Testing, Stable, Sid and Manjaro, Mageia 3, LMDE
Posts: 2,628
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by 62chevy
Okay yes to everything and download only will work then you can install what you want with dpkg -i or just run it again without the -yd.
I get the same results just differently and prefer aptitude over apt-get for no other reason than that is what I'm used to and know best. Old habits die hard even when the Release Notes said apt-get was the preferred way to upgrade Lenny to Squeeze.
I admit to similar feelings for apt-get. Aptitude, though, now that I am looking into it more, really has some very neat abilities. Now that they have made them more compatible they make a great pair of tools.
One of the reasons I switched away from Ubuntu was the fact that they decided to drop aptitude as a default install. I hadn't even begun to learn what it could do when they announced that "improvement" but did "me too" the bug filed against removing it. Just foolish. Yes you can always install it. This does not give new users a chance to learn about it.
Using those two tools is a lot easier, for me, than using dpkg directly. As far as I am concerned aptitude is worth having if the only thing you ever did with it was keep-all, why and why-not. The options for installing with dependency problems is icing on the cake.
I still prefer apt-get for general package management. Probably because it is what I am used to.
You can, pretty easily, totally screw a perfectly good install with either of them. Just don't pay attention. I know I have done this with both. This was not a tool problem. This was a picnic problem.
Right now I have xorg-xserver pinned so nvidia drivers will work correctly. full-upgrade would change that and upgrade leaves it as is.
Your pinning is probably not helping there at all at the moment, as the same xorg versions are now in both testing and unstable. It went in a few days ago. The safe-upgrades alone are probably what is preventing the upgrade of xorg and removal of the nvidia packages. One approach is to put the xorg packages you have pinned on hold and then dist-upgrade.
I have a working Nvidia driver with the current version of X in Testing:
Code:
ade@Pc1:~$ X -version
X.Org X Server 1.11.1
Release Date: 2011-09-24
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 3.1.0-rc4-amd64 x86_64 Debian
Current Operating System: Linux Pc1 3.0.0-4.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Tue Sep 6 01:59:23 CDT 2011 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.0.0-4.dmz.2-liquorix-amd64 root=UUID=59b0628e-8db5-46e8-bbbe-39ae19e3da5f ro iommu=noaperture nomodeset nouveau.modeset=0
Build Date: 24 September 2011 09:28:42AM
xorg-server 2:1.11.1-1 (Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org>)
Current version of pixman: 0.22.2
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Went back to using the 'Debian' method to install the driver via smxi/sgfxi.
Might be worth trying if you are having problems.
Went back to using the 'Debian' method to install the driver via smxi/sgfxi.
Might be worth trying if you are having problems.
smxi/sgfxi are not the debian method - unless all that has changed recently? Last time I checked, they download the driver from the vendor's website, not from the official repos.
Your pinning is probably not helping there at all at the moment, as the same xorg versions are now in both testing and unstable. It went in a few days ago. The safe-upgrades alone are probably what is preventing the upgrade of xorg and removal of the nvidia packages. One approach is to put the xorg packages you have pinned on hold and then dist-upgrade.
That would be one way to do it but I have xserver pinned to a version number knowing full well Testing would get the newer version.
Xorg,Debian and nVidia have been working on the problem and every week it gets a little better so maybe that new driver they released yesterday will be a big improvement. I'll find out tonight.
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