[Cialug] Debian updated without choosing

[Jeff Chapin]

I have had great luck moving from testing to stable. I have actually
done it on two separate machines. The key is patience. I simply waited a
*long* time withough apt-get updating, modified the sources.list and
updated. I had made some bad decisions about which version of the OS to
use in the long-long ago of my linux learning (ok, so not that long ago,
only 7 years) and a while after it I decided I wanted something a little
more stable for my home fileserver.

It did break a few things, but they were usually easy to repair. I might
not ever do that again, other than for fun -- I don't completely trust
the machine, and have had some peculiarities in dependences crop up for
some time.

Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:
> See below.
>
> On Monday January 26 2009 12:40, Tom Sellers wrote:
>   
>> OK
>>
>> Here is the sources.list file contents.
>>
>> #
>>
>> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r4a _Etch_ - Official i386 CD
>> Binary-1 20080803-21:07]/ etch contrib main
>>
>>
>> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r4a _Etch_ - Official i386 CD
>> Binary-1 20080803-21:07]/ etch contrib main
>>
>>
>> # Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
>>
>> # deb http://security.debian.org/ etch main
>>
>> # Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
>>
>> # deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
>>
>> # deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ sarge main
>>
>> deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian sid main
>>     
>                                      ^^^
>
> Extra linefeeds aside, there's your problem. Debian is configured to get 
> updates from ftp.de.debian.org ("de"... is that in Germany? You might 
> consider a more local mirror.). And it is configured to pull updates 
> from the "sid" branch. So, congratulations, you're not just 
> running "Testing", but are probably running "Unstable".
>
> Unfortunately, while it is easy to upgrade Stable -> Testing -> 
> Unstable, going the other way is usually not so simple. If you really 
> want to get back to Stable, the safest and easiest way would probably 
> be to reinstall. And then make sure the lines that are supposedly 
> "commented out by installer because it failed to verify" are 
> uncommented. It would be useful to really figure out why everything is 
> commented out except for the one ftp.de.debian.org line at the end, and 
> where that one line came from.
>
>
>   
>> --- On Fri, 1/23/09, kristau <kristau at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> From: kristau <kristau at gmail.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [Cialug] Debian updated without choosing
>>> To: "Central Iowa Linux Users Group" <cialug at cialug.org>
>>> Date: Friday, January 23, 2009, 11:46 PM
>>> On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Tom Sellers
>>>
>>> <tomsellers2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> This question was asked several times when I left
>>>>         
>>> posts on Linux Questions as well.  Since I am a new Linux
>>> user I am not really sure what this file is all about.  Can
>>> you enlighten me on that?  I will have to get back to you on
>>> the contents as I can't look right now.
>>>
>>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you were the
>>> gentleman with
>>> whom I visited prior to the last LUG meeting.  If so,
>>> I'm pretty sure
>>> your laptop had the default values in the /etc/apt/sources
>>> file, so
>>> I'm not sure why it would self-upgrade to Lenny.
>>> Usually under
>>> Debian-based systems you have to specify a full version
>>> upgrade like
>>> that, so it shouldn't do that on it's own.  Several
>>> possibilities come
>>> to mind (in order of most likely to least likely):
>>>
>>> 1) You inadvertently checked a box to upgrade the
>>> distribution.
>>> 2) The default apt configuration was, again inadvertently,
>>> changed by you.
>>> 3) Debian changed their configuration to push out the next
>>> upgrade by default.
>>> 4) Dark, Mysterious Forces are conspiring against you.
>>> Run.  Now!
>>>
>>> I'm not trying to place the blame on you.  We have all,
>>> however,
>>> inadvertently changed a setting only to later discover that
>>> it
>>> resulted in unintended results.  If you post the contents
>>> of your
>>> /etc/apt/sources file to this list, I'm sure myself or
>>> someone else
>>> can see if there is anything in it that would have caused
>>> the
>>> automatic upgrade.
>>>
>>> But then again, it could be those Dark, Mysterious Forces.
>>> Beware!
>>>
>>> Ken Ristau
>>> --
>>> Tired programmer
>>> Coding late into the night
>>> The core dump follows
>>>
>>> My GNUPG public key is available at
>>> http://www.kristau.net/public_key.asc
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Cialug mailing list
>>> Cialug at cialug.org
>>> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
>>>       
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>
>