[Cialug] Debian updated without choosing

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

You're right, the one exception to downgrades being difficult are when 
moving from Testing to Stable shortly after Testing has become the new 
Stable. In that case if you use the Toy Story labelling instead of 
Stable/Testing/Unstable, it is easier to follow. For example, when Etch 
(the current Stable) is retired, Lenny (the current Testing) will 
become Stable. So if one is tracking Lenny, they'll still be running 
Lenny 6 months from now but will have moved from Testing to Stable. 
(That is, assuming it becomes stable within 6 months.)

I suppose one might migrate from Unstable to Testing by updating 
sources.list and waiting a few weeks before doing an "aptitude update" 
again. The breakage in that instance would probably be manageable.

I actually run Testing on my home desktop most of the time, but right 
after it becomes Stable i stick with it for 4 to 6 months before 
upgrading to the new Testing. The reason for that is a new Testing 
tends to be quite unstable for a few months while all the major changes 
that were being pushed off during the process of freezing/fossilizing a 
new Stable are made. But, i didn't mention all this at first because i 
figured it would be confusing to a relative beginner with Debian. On 
servers i just run Stable. I have a server at home that survived the 
Sarge -> Etch upgrade with no problems. I expect it will survive 
Etch -> Lenny just as easily, assuming the hardware hasn't died before 
Lenny becomes Stable.

On Monday January 26 2009 13:06, Jeff Chapin wrote:
>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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
+1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA