According to a thread on linux.debian.user there are chances that an upgrade is very easy:
- Edit /etc/apt/sources.list, changing "stable" to "testing".
- Run dselect
Here is how it worked on asterix. After modifying sources.list I started dselect:
Debian `dselect' package handling frontend.* 0. [A]ccess Choose the access method to use. 1. [U]pdate Update list of available packages, if possible. 2. [S]elect Request which packages you want on your system. 3. [I]nstall Install and upgrade wanted packages. 4. [C]onfig Configure any packages that are unconfigured. 5. [R]emove Remove unwanted software. 6. [Q]uit Quit dselect.
Move around with ^P and ^N, cursor keys, initial letters, or digits; Press
to confirm selection. ^L redraws screen. Version 1.10.20 (i386). Copyright (C) 1994-1996 Ian Jackson. Copyright (C) 2000,2001 Wichert Akkerman. This is free software; see the GNU General Public Licence version 2 or later for copying conditions. There is NO warranty. See dselect --licence for details.
In dselect I browsed intuitively through the list (elect), checking here and there whether the selection is okay. I manually added some packages. Here are the most important keys for me:
- / starts a search
- \ repeat last search
- [Insert] to install the selected package
- [Enter] to confirm and go back to main menu.
Then run nstall:
375 upgraded, 64 newly installed, 11 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 222MB of archives. After unpacking 82.1MB of additional disk space will be used. E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/. Some errors occurred while unpacking. I'm going to configure the packages that were installed. This may result in duplicate errors or errors caused by missing dependencies. This is OK, only the errors above this message are important. Please fix them and run I]nstall again Press enter to continue.
And the download started. I went to bed. Once during the night I woke up and had a look: the installer had some questions and was waiting for my answer. How good that I woke up. I answered all questions with [Enter], not wanting to wake up completely.
One of these [Enter] was not a good idea: allowing to disable the PCMCIA manager. Afterwards, since I did all this through ssh, my communication got locked. Somehow I interrupted with several Ctrl-C, managed to do a shutdown and turned the computer off and went back to sleep.
Next morning, simply restarted dselect who seemed to recover quite well from this interruption:
274 upgraded, 45 newly installed, 5 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 109 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 55.7kB/161MB of archives. After unpacking 51.8MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Get:1 http://ftp.de.debian.org testing/main python2.3-sqlite 0.4.3-2 [24.8kB] Get:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org testing/main python-sqlite 0.4.3-2 2270B] Get:3 http://ftp.de.debian.org testing/main python2.3-weblib 1.3.1-1 [22.5kB] Get:4 http://ftp.de.debian.org testing/main python-weblib 1.3.1-1 [6088B] Fetched 55.7kB in 2s (22.2kB/s) Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... 52431 files and directories currently installed.) ...
After some more cycles, there is now only one package which seems to fail:
asterix:/home/luc# dselect Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? Y/n] Setting up apache (1.3.29.0.2-4) ... Starting web server: apache failed invoke-rc.d: initscript apache, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing apache (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: apache E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Some errors occurred while unpacking. I'm going to configure the packages that were installed. This may result in duplicate errors or errors caused by missing dependencies. This is OK, only the errors above this message are important. Please fix them and run I]nstall again Press enter to continue.Setting up apache (1.3.29.0.2-4) ... Starting web server: apache failed invoke-rc.d: initscript apache, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing apache (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: apache
installation script returned error exit status 100. Press
to continue.