[SOLVED] Stretch dist-upgrade problems

mzsade · 09-12-2015, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273

I have found I seem to have to wait a shorter period for things to be sorted out in Sid than in Testing and that packages go missing for shorter periods of time -- making Sid sort-of more "stable" for me than Testing. I can't say I've ever experiences a "bug" in either -- with that said I bet I'll see one soon

.

I have tried upgrading to Stetch including installing it on a blank drive from the official alpha 2 release and it just wouldn't boot up on my H/W, so i can attest to Stretch being more problematic. I am tempted to try out Sid now after reading this.

273 · 09-12-2015, 04:51 PM

Remember if you're installing something just to dist-upgrade then just install it, apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade to put you in line with the repositories, reboot if necessary (kernel upgrade etc.) then modify sources.list and update and dist-upgrade again. Don't install any other programs, try to get any hardware working or anything else. Preferably don't install X11 at all on the initial install but do so after the dist-upgrade. That way you don't potentially have a bunch of legacy configuration files in your home directory, for example, and you're less likely to find package conflicts.

rokytnji · 09-12-2015, 06:34 PM

Meh, just info for previous posts here

Code:

harry@biker:~
$ apt-cache policy gcc
gcc:
  Installed: 4:5.2.1-4
  Candidate: 4:5.2.1-4
  Version table:
 *** 4:5.2.1-4 0
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
harry@biker:~
$ cat /etc/debian_version
stretch/sid
harry@biker:~
$ sudo apt-get -f install
[sudo] password for harry: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
harry@biker:~
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

273 · 09-12-2015, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rokytnji

Meh, just info for previous posts here

Code:

harry@biker:~
$ apt-cache policy gcc
gcc:
  Installed: 4:5.2.1-4
  Candidate: 4:5.2.1-4
  Version table:
 *** 4:5.2.1-4 0
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
harry@biker:~
$ cat /etc/debian_version
stretch/sid
harry@biker:~
$ sudo apt-get -f install
[sudo] password for harry: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
harry@biker:~
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

My system's up to date also, though apt is recommending I autoremove pretty much all of XFCE as well as a couple of other things. Hopefully when the new versions show up I'll be able to autoremove.

EDDY1 · 09-13-2015, 12:41 AM

@273 when I get that message I just open aptitude & mark installed manually then you don't get it & it will only be removed during upgrade.

273 · 09-13-2015, 04:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EDDY1

@273 when I get that message I just open aptitude & mark installed manually then you don't get it & it will only be removed during upgrade.

Ah, yes, I could just apt-get install the list as I have done in the past but are you sure that they are then removed on an upgrade? I was under the impression superseded things may stick around.

Phiebie · 09-14-2015, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randicus Draco Albus

As others have already pointed out, the purpose of the testing system is for a few users to help identify bugs and report them so developers can fix them. That requires people who know how to trouble-shoot occasional bugs.

You are completely right with this and I appreciate(d), that Debian introduced this flavour between "don't know if it works, try yourself"(Sid) and "99% trustworthy and solid"(Stable).
But please now explain how I should/could do kind of testing on programs, that can't be installed nowadays due to (sometimes) really idiotic dependencies: a new *aptitude* also wants to take with it *libreoffice5* and that needs *GCC 5* and that needs *libstdc++6* and that breaks *libboost-date-time* and then it's end of story.
Or do you dare to literally remove 120 programs and install 36 new ones to resolve this chaos? Made by the responsible team, that knew about the breakings already in Sid, but nevertheless waved them through to testing!
Utterly sour feelings I have now left after some 5 or more years in "testing".

273 · 09-14-2015, 12:45 PM

I must admit that far and away the most issues I have with any distribution (which has it) are with package management so I do think that's a fair comment, Phiebie. I mean, I think it is fine for the folks at Debian to do as they wish but it is a strange situation.

Head_on_a_Stick · 09-14-2015, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phiebie

please now explain how I should/could do kind of testing on programs, that can't be installed nowadays due to (sometimes) really idiotic dependencies: a new *aptitude* also wants to take with it *libreoffice5* and that needs *GCC 5* and that needs *libstdc++6* and that breaks *libboost-date-time* and then it's end of story.
Or do you dare to literally remove 120 programs and install 36 new ones to resolve this chaos? Made by the responsible team, that knew about the breakings already in Sid, but nevertheless waved them through to testing!
Utterly sour feelings I have now left after some 5 or more years in "testing".

The point you are missing here is that Testing/Unstable is *not* a Debian release.

It is a staging area where the components that may comprise the next Debian release (ie, Debian Stable) can be assembled to check if they work.

At times, the process of moving new groups of packages and their associated dependencies will leave packages un-installable.

Either learn how to use APT-pinning to pull the packages you want from different repositories or simply wait until you can cleanly `dist-upgrade`

EDDY1 · 09-15-2015, 01:54 AM

@273 check this out
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...ninstall-gnome

273 · 09-15-2015, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EDDY1

@273 check this out
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...ninstall-gnome

Thanks, I had done that in the past but wondered what happened to, say, libsmokeqtcore4-3 if I were to manually install it -- is it then kept when the version number is incremented to libsmokeqtcore4-4 or not? Similarly, what happens to deprecated commands and applications? I'm not all that bothered about having things hang around but I often just ignore autoremove until things sort themselves out or I know I don't need the packages.