How to upgrade from Slackware 10.1 to current?
 

Hello,

Is there a specific order to do the upgrade? Basically, I used to compile Qt, KDE, mplayer and other applications from source but I want to make use of the latest packages under Slackware current.

In one of the posts mianve suggested me to read the ChangeLog but there is no specific order for which packages to start with. In another post Keefaz suggested to upgrade glibc, gcc, coreutils and binutils.

Could anyone guide me please?

swaret.sourceforge.net

I'd recommend that you take a look at the instructions for upgrading to SLackware 10.1 and follow the order listed there. The instructions can be found here:
ftp.slackware.com/slackware-10.1/UPGRADE.TXT
(Of course, you can use a mirror).

The advice there is similar to what Keefaz suggested - upgrade glibc related libraries first, and then pkgtools and sed if necessary - but there are additional instructions about how to boot into single-user mode for the upgrade and so on.

Basically, you'd need to begin by deciding which of the packages in current you will use (based on what you have installed, maybe all of the packages but it depends on your system) and then downloading them to your machine. Then you could follow the UPGRADE.TXT instructions.

swaret --upgade -a does it all for me.
You can get swaret from swaret.sourceforge.net, as someone suggested above. It might not be the best way but it works :P

The only caveat is that sometimes, once in a great while, you WILL run into problems using current. For instance, the "current" version of udev is know to break alsa.

Later,
MMYoung

I'd like to add a warning about blindly using swaret (or any other tool like it) with current. You REALLY need to read the changelogs in current because packages are put in there that WILL break your system unless you take specific action. Swaret is a decent tool, but you need to understand what it is doing and how it can cause trouble.

Thanks everyone,

I have followed the instructions in UPGRADE.TXT to upgrade from 10.1 to current. I have printed the change log as well and I am planning to go through it today.

MMYoung - the udev problem is with the /testing 2.6 kernel, no problem with the 2.4.31 kernel of "current"

Basel - Swaret does not normally update the kernel, alsa is built for specific kernel versions, so you must be careful to stay in sync.

KDE seems to leave remnants of older versions around causing console error messages about mime types. It might be worth waiting a little while for 10.2 to come out and do a clean install.

One thing I have noticed after upgrading to current and also under SuSE 9.3 is that:
The crash warrning window appears when I try to shutdown or reboot my machine BUT the system goes directly to the console and display the shutdown commands. This happens in fraction of seconds and I cann't click on close or view the stacl trace of the error. Why do you think this happens?

Is there a way to revert a package to an older version?

I have just went through the change log and I should have done that earlier before the upgrade. In fact there are only few packages that I need to upgrade instead of upgrading all packages.

In general, it's possible to uninstall the package and then reinstall the version you want (from Slackware 10.1?).

However, some of the packages depend on others in current. So you need to be careful here.

What packages do you want to revert?

What is this ?
 

What is the crash warning window ?

The one which has a nice bomb and appears once a KDE application crashes.

Maybe KDE doesn't like to be brutally stopped with a shutdown command ?

In fluxbox it works fine, exept maybe a broken connection to display 0 error...

But I am using the shutdown button not using calling shutdown from the console as root. BTW, is it possible to get the list of messages for system shutdown and reboot?

What do you want to acheive ? Give a custom message for shutdown command ?

You could do it like :
Try man shutdown for more infos

No, no, no, I do not want to print anything. I meant the system log for shutdown, maybe from the system log I can get info about that error message.

/var/log/syslog maybe ?
You talk about system shutdown command or KDE shutdown ?

Also, there is no log on the error window itself ?

Is there a difference? I am refering to the shutdown button which appears when you click on logout form the context menu.

I don't know, is it the same behavior if you do
/sbin/shutdown -h now from a konsole
or if you click on the shutdown button ?

I mean does the error window appear in both case ?

I am not sure, I will try it later and let you know.

Acutally it's with ANY 2.6 kernel since, unless matters have changed recently, udev doesn't work with the 2.4 kernels and /dev population is handled the old way. If you only run the 2.4 kernel you can leave the rc.udev executable and it won't affect anything.

Later,
MMYoung