libc6 update question - disaster?
 

This is the latest in a long line of attempts to do something that might really -- in the long run -- be ill advised.

I use etch. I've come across a package in lenny that requires ONLY the ugrade of libc6 in order to be installed (I think). My question is, should I upgrade libc6 to version 2.5-9 and install the package or not. Will this break my system? The package I am ultimately interested in from lenny is 'usplash-theme-debian'.

Any advice would be appreciated. :)

assuming that you could still boot your machine, which i'm sure you could...

you could always just apt-get remove libc6, change the sources.list back to etch and apt-get install libc6

that would take it back to the old version... err... i think.

apt does depend on libc6. Which makes me ask: What exactly would break if everything that depended on libc6 broke? What would be left working? Would apps work partially? Would apt-get work or would I need to re-install?

what do you mean by work partially???:confused:

Please consider this before you do that:

Let me try again, a bit more seriously. Here's the description of libc6 from aptitude: If you upgrade it, you will need to upgrade your whole system to Lenny. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I've been using Debian testing every day since December (when testing was still Etch) without a hitch. Still it is less stable than stable, so if it's a production computer, you should think seriously about it.

Can I get away with not upgrading the whole system to lenny? Can I download the new libc6 and install it with dpkg? Everything depends on it, it depends on almost nothing. I won't be removing it, I'll be upgrading it. I suppose that won't work?

EDIT: There are two questions here. 1) Will dpkg allow me to do it? and 2) Will my system need to be re-installed ... will it work?

As I understand it, you would break your system doing that. If you really want it that badly, check out the apt manual on how to keep a mixed system and try that. Here's a link APT manual

yea... now that I think about it, libc6 is probably a bad package to mess up.

The app I did that with was compiz, which isn't nearly as important.

Why not look for a backported version instead of borking up the system. Try installing this for instance: http://live.debian.net/debian/pool/m...ebian/?C=N;O=A
Or build it from source.

war1025, utanja, Telemachos: Thank you for your advice. makuyl: I will probably try out the backports suggestion. I will post my progress later if I have any success. Thanks again.

makuyl:

The Debian Live backport of usplash-theme-debian works great. Thanks for the info.