Is it possible to boot and install from the sarge cd images?

As far as I know it is very difficult to get your system up and running from Sarge CDs. What I did was installed my base system from Debian 3.0 and upgraded with Sarge CDs.

I saw an alternate solution on this site stating that Knoppix can help in this issue. I don't have much idea on it. Please search for that thread.

get a knoppix cd

#knx-hdinstall
#aptitude
(or apt-get)

trimm the packages you don't need

add the sarge cds in /etc/apt/sources.list
(#apt-setup)

#aptitude then press 'u'
(or #apt-get upgrade)

and there you have it

the versions on knoppix are newer than the ones from woody, so many of them will not need upgrade


and then add the security updates' site to your sources list
and do the upgade phase again

You would need to do an apt-get dist-upgrade since you will only upgrade the packages that have exactly the same dependencies when doing a regular apt-get upgrade.

Btw, if you're running sarge/testing or sid/unstable you should always use dist-upgrade since the packages are actively being updated in these distributions. If you don't you'll get a lot of "$$ number of packages not upgraded" because of dependency problems.

Håkan

afaik, Knoppix is debian unstable/testing so no need for dist-upgrade there...
This would mean that whatever version you have you will end up with unstable...

I ran debian testing for about 3 months - as long as I had intenet connectivity and did only one dist-upgrade, so I had testing as I went up from woody...

By the end of the period I went for pinning (mozilla and acrobat reader) and it worked like a charm...

Errr...no.
If you only have testing/sarge entries in your sources.list apt would never even see unstable. This is how testing should be kept up to date since you will never be able to keep up with the distribution if you only do plain apt-get upgrade. As time goes by an increasing number of packages would be held back since one package can be replaced by another one in testing. If you don't use apt-get dist-upgrade that package will never be replaced by the new one...and you will end up with a weird testing-but-not-up-to-date type of distribution since new versions of packages can't be installed (they depend on the new replacement package).

Remember testing is a dynamic distribution, it changes as packages trickle down from Sid and old packages are removed or replaced. It's a whole different story if you're running stable since packages in stable never gets replaced, only updated (for security measures, etc).

Håkan

I get your point, but I don't think your opinion is correct...

but as I said I had debian testing pinned, so for me I think ( not so sure) that would have been the case (ending up with unstable) for me...

But, still I think that only one dist-upgrade should be made and then only upgrades....




I must say that I used aptitude, so updating showed up that there were packs upgraded (eg. pack xxxx-2.34-12.deb was upgraded with xxxx-3.00-1.deb)...

I must review the doc on this matter...

I see yours too, and I will bring a real-world example this time around to prove my point.

Yes, of course. You upgrade the package. But a while ago in Sid and quite recently in Sarge, console-tools-libs was replaced by libconsole. Several other packages that used to depend on console-tools-libs were updated to depend on libconsole instead. If you would try to upgrade the packages that used to depend on console-tools-libs (console-tools, kbdcompat, and so on) to their new versions you would never succeed, because an apt-get upgrade will *not* replace console-tools-libs with libconsole. So when you run apt-get upgrade you will get the familiar "<number> packages kept back" message as console-tools-libs cannot be upgraded to a newer version (it's gone!) and the packages that used to depend on it are missing their new dependency (libconsole).

If you run apt-get dist-upgrade console-tools-libs will be removed and libconsole will take its place to satisfy the dependencies of kbdcompat, et al.

This is true when upgrading from one stable release to another. I think this might be what you're thinking of.
Just to give you an example: If you were running Potato (the old stable) and then when Woody was released you could do an apt-get dist-upgrade. This would upgrade your system to the new stable. After that you can apt-get upgrade to your heart's content since no packages will be replaced by other packages in a stable distribution - stable is pretty static, whereas testing is dynamic (packages often get removed or replaced).

Håkan

you seem preety sure on what you are saying...
I guess that is because you are talking from experince (or from read code ) so I can't contradict you (and I wouldn't do it just for the love of it)...

As I see you are preety active on the forum (over 200 posts in just two months) so I guess you could be as fanatic (in good sense) with your studying of Debian GNU/Linux. For the moment I will take your statement for granted...

But I'll be back !! (Joking/serious if I find is the other way around)

You're welcome to prove me wrong on anything else, but not on this one.

And it's always nice to have a good discussion, so thank you. You made me look it up and test it before I posted. LOL

Håkan