how to perform a safe upgrade in debian?
 

I am using debian 5.04 + LXDE. In the past, I sometime encounter problems such as the distro broken after performed a full apt dist-upgrade or upgrade. Now, I am more conservative, I am using apt safe-upgrade.

I want to know are there anyway to do a better safe upgrade for debian without breaking the distro?

Yes. You should be using aptitude, not apt-get.

What exactly is being "broken"?

In general the major cause of failed upgrades in Debian (talking about stable here, not testing or sid) is that poor quality, unoffical packages have been installed on the system.

Cheers,

Evo2.

Hello bbmak,

If you are concerned for stability, ensure that repositories you are using are the stable ones.

You can safely tell Debian to ignore specific packages.
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap....en.html#s-pin

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