Upgrade notes...

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

This posting is primarily for the attention of Bruce P. and Ian J., 
although I will happily accept guidance and comments from anyone who 
wishes to give them.

The results of my testing of R6 to 1.1 upgrade procedures are finally 
making their way from my notes to some kind of document. Before I get to 
far along I thought I should present what I have so far so I can get 
feedback about the direction I am going and whatever I might have missed 
or miss-spoken.

The following documentation stops before covering use of dselect and does 
not include a section (in the works) about answering questions about 
config file overwrites. Please comment on what is here (I want to know 
what is missing also, but separately) and whether I should continue.
--------------------------  cut here  -------------------------------------
Some notes on installation of the Debian 1.1 Beta Release.

The test bench for the information presented here is a Debian R6
installation. This system is not complex. Aside from the base, network,
development, doc, and selected editors, mail readers and some odd tools, this
is a very vanilla installation. No cron jobs have been added to the default
configuration provided by the original installation.

Before you begin the upgrade you must have a kernel with built-in ELF
support (NOT in a module). The test bench used the 1.2.13 kernel, custom
compiled with no modules and with ELF support. This should assure those who
can not advance their kernel version that they can still upgrade to Debian
1.1.

GETTING STARTED

Once you have a kernel with built-in ELF support, you first need to upgrade
the base packages. These are the packages that were installed from the three
"base disks" during the original installation of R6. (Unless of course, you
upgraded from a previous version of Debian.)
The following script is intended to indicate the proper order of
installation and removal of the various packages needed for a clean base
upgrade. It is not intended to be used as a script (although it was tested
as a script and performed a clean upgrade), but if the paths and version
numbers are correct, you could use it.

#!/bin/sh
# base.upgrade
#
# put this file in the binary path of the package tree and execute it
# it will perform an upgrade of an R6 system to 1.1
#
# Pick a package installer
#
dpkg -i base/dpkg-1.1.5.deb
#
dpkg -i base/ld.so-1.7.14-4.deb
#
dpkg -i base/libc5-5.2.18-4.deb
#
dpkg -i base/libdb1-1.85.2-8.deb
dpkg -i base/ncurses3.0-1.9.8a-5.deb
dpkg -i base/bsdutils-2.0-2.deb
dpkg -i base/mbr-1.0.0-2.deb
#
dpkg --purge librl
dpkg -i base/libreadline2-2.0-15.deb
#
dpkg --purge --force-depends ncurses-runtime
dpkg -i base/ncurses-base-1.9.8a-5.deb
#
dpkg --purge tput
dpkg -i base/ncurses-bin-1.9.8a-5.deb
#
dpkg -i misc/dialog*.deb
dpkg -i base/modconf-0.1.0-0.deb
#
dpkg -i --force-conflicts base/libgdbm1-1.7.3-11.deb
dpkg -i doc/man*.deb
#
dpkg -i base/bdflush-1.5-1.deb
dpkg -i base/login-1.0-1.deb
dpkg -i base/getty-1.0-1.deb
dpkg -i base/passwd-1.0-1.deb
dpkg -i base/util-linux-2.5-1.deb
dpkg -i base/debian-utils-1.0-1.deb

dpkg -i base/adduser-1.94-4.deb
dpkg -i base/ae-96.2-2.deb
dpkg -i base/base-1.1.0-2.deb
dpkg -i base/bash-1.14.6-4.deb
dpkg -i base/diff-2.7-10.deb
dpkg -i base/e2fsprogs-1.02-1.deb
dpkg -i base/ed-0.2-11.deb
dpkg -i base/fdflush-1.0.0-2.deb
dpkg -i base/fileutils-3.12-4.deb
dpkg -i base/findutils-4.1-7.deb
dpkg -i base/gawk-3.0.0-2.deb
dpkg -i base/grep-2.0-5.deb
dpkg -i base/gzip-1.2.4-9.deb
dpkg -i base/hostname-1.9-1.deb
dpkg -i base/kbd-0.90-5.deb

dpkg -i base/modules-1.3.69f-1.deb

dpkg -i base/mount-2.5i-2.deb

dpkg -i base/procps-0.99-2.deb
dpkg -i base/sysklogd-1.2-22.deb

dpkg -i base/sed-2.05-6.deb
dpkg -i base/setserial-2.10-8.deb
dpkg -i base/sh-utils-1.12-5.deb
dpkg -i base/syslinux-1.20-0.deb
dpkg -i base/tar-1.11.8-4.deb
dpkg -i base/textutils-1.11-4.deb
dpkg -i base/timezone-7.46-1.deb

dpkg -i base/image-1.3.64-0.deb
#
# If these last two steps do not complete, you may not be able to reboot
#
dpkg -i base/sysvinit-2.60-1.deb

dpkg -i base/lilo-17-2.deb

exit 0

However you upgrade the base packages, either by hand with dpkg as described
above, or using dselect, you will first need to upgrade dpkg.

STEP ONE (1)

Install dpkg-1.1.5aout.deb. Whether or not your system is full ELF yet or
not, this is a good starting point. If you have already ditched your libc4
in favor of libc5 you will need the elf version of dpkg. The advantage of
this version of dpkg in this installation is that it has --force-overwrite
as the default.
During installation the new dpkg will probably notice some problems with the
way the start/stop links are configured for certain daemons, and recommend
that you let it change them. Taking the recommendation created no problems
for the system that resulted from the changes. Use your own judgement on
this. If you have made purposful modifications in these areas you probably
want to answer no.
Once dpkg has been installed you are ready to choose between the above
script and other uses of dpkg to create an upgraded system, or you can
choose to use dselect and let it manage the conflict resolution for you.

MAKE THE CHOICE

There are a number of reasons why you might choose to upgrade your system by
hand. Rather than list the many that I can think of, I leave it up to you to
determine your reasons for doing the upgrade by hand. Once you have decided
what your reasons are for taking this path, refer to those reasons often
during the rest of the installation.

If you choose to go the "by hand" route work through the above listing, then
work through the devel section, then pick a target and go for it...

If you choose to use dselect, be prepaired to read every help screen very
very closely. The information you need is usually there, but sometimes you
may not realise it at the time. If you are an experienced dselect user you
will not find much of interest in the following material and should go ahead
and begin your upgrade.
---------------------------------  cut here  ---------------------------

TIA,

Dwarf

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 877-0257
      Flexible Software              Fax:     NONE 
      Black Creek Critters           e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net

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