Hi Guys,

I need help trying to understand how to update packages in Slackware or more to the point the best practice to use for packages update. I have been using slack for a short time only.
I have been updating (patching) by downloading the "tgz" file. Then run upgradepkg "package name". That has worked for me but I was told today that was not best practice.
For example, I need to update bind. When I run "/usr/sbin/named -v" that tells me the version -> BIND 9.4.3-P5.
I have discovered today that there was an updated package for bind
Updated package for Slackware -current:
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar...7.1-i486-1.txz
So I proceeded to try to download this package but to no avail as the package is not there anymore. I know this might sound very stupid to most of you smart people, but how do I run a package update if I don't have the package.tgz ?
I did run slackpkg update with a mirror. That did not give me the bind updated package either.

I am really lost at sea here.
Can anyone help please ??

Kind Regards,

The official tool for this is 'slackpkg' and the best source of information is 'man slackpkg'.
You need to select the mirror site you want to use by uncommenting a line in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors. Please do not use the slackware.com site directly.
I suspect that you have uncommented a line in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors but have left a leading space character in place. This will also need to be removed so that slackpkg will use the selected mirror.
You can check your selection using this command:

Thanks for your reply.
My problem was that I selected a mirror in 13.1 and not in current. When I selected in current I got my updates but when I rebooted, was greeted by a black screen. I had made a bootable usb rescue system so I started of it. Then I realized that the unit was having kernel panics.
I think I am going to have to wipe out the drive and reinstall the system unless you know a way around my issue

Thanks

If you are not experienced in running Slackware, then you should probably stick with Slackware stable. When you have enough experience you can move to current if you want to.
Slackware current is for people who really know what they are doing and want to help with reporting bugs on the development release.
Slackware stable will run rock solid stable for the rest of us.

You could always run Slackare stable and Slackware current on your computer if you have enough hard drive space to create partitions for both current and stable.

Yep, I kind of got the drift. I suppose it is a learning curve; steep though but fun

Yikes! Sorry about that, now I feel guilty. Right now is NOT a good time to be learning slackpkg and playing with -current, as a new glibc and a new kernel have just come into -current. You have probably not got your /etc/slackpkg/blacklist file set up to ignore kernel upgrades that are not applicable to your system.
If you were using the generic kernel with an initrd, then you may have downloaded a new generic kernel and not updated your initrd to suit. /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh is your friend

If you have bootable rescue system, then your system can be recovered, but more detail will be needed. If you can live with a fresh install, that will be faster.

allend,

Thank you for your reply.
No worries at all. You do not have to apologize at all. On the contrary.. Thank you for making a distro like slackware possible.
I did a fresh install and all is back to normal.
I did try another upgrade of the kernel last Sunday and got another kernel panic. I ran upgrade of software that i needed without new kernel and its all good. I will stick with 13.1 and go to current only for specific software upgrade; but I am not faced with another issue. If I use current for specific soft, its newer than 13.1. So when I go back to 13.1 for update, I rightfully get a message that the txt file is older than the one I have in my machine. I did not proceed further. Would you have any suggestion on how best to proceed ?

Best Regards, and thank you again for the support and making slack possible...

The .txt file will be different between -current and stable. The option is to download anyway (y) or no (n). Just type y for yes and download it anyway.

Hi mlangdn,

Thanks for your reply. I was not specific enough in my question. Would there be any technical incidence if I download the txt file from stable instead of current ? As I go to current for certain upgrades and then go back to stable.

Kind Regards,

In general, you really don't want to mix current packages into a stable release. Particularly if something like glibc is different. If you need the newer versions of software, I'd look at using the slackbuilds to compile it on a stable system.

Getting over my WTF moment! For the record, I am NOT a Slackware developer, merely a user who participates in this forum, trying to guide a new user on the use of a basic software tool for managing the system.
The 'slackpkg' tool is only applicable to official Slackware packages, so any software outside of the official release will not be affected.
If you update an official package, then you can add it to the /etc/slackpkg/blacklist file so that it will not be considered by 'slackpkg'.

Thank you so much for pointing out this script. It's the first I've heard of it.

Heretofore I'd consulted the README.initrd file in /boot but -- I know this will sound stupid -- I panicked at one point because the examples changed, and no longer fit my system ... luckily I was able to find the previous invocation of mkinitrd in my history and save it as a text file so I'd never lose it, but ...

... it sounds as though with this script I no longer have to do that. Maybe README.initrd (initrd mini-HOWTO) should be updated to mention this ...?