dpkg error on apt-get upgrade

[Giles Orr]

On 21 October 2010 17:43, Dave Mason <dmason-bqArmZWzea/GcjXNFnLQ/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> On Oct 21, 2010, at 16:36, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 03:30:19PM -0400, Dave Mason wrote:
>>>
>>> If I'm using a relatively special (limited) install this seems like it would be fairly reasonable.  I think rather than "unstable" I'd put "sid" in my /etc/apt/sources.list so that I would track that as it moved, eventually, to stable.
>>
>> It won't.  sid == unstable.  Remember in toy story sid is the kid next
>> door that destroys toys.  So sid is where things may be broken.  sid is
>> also not a toy.  All the Debian releases are named after toys in toy
>> story.
>
> When I said eventually stable, I assumed via testing.  I thought that lenny was once unstable, then it was testing, then it was released as stable.  sid is the release that is currently equivalent to unstable; when squeeze becomes stable, will not lenny become oldstable, sid become testing, and a copy of sid be made under another name (which you referenced as already having been decided upon) and that will be the new unstable?
>
>> The way it works is that when a new release happens, it changes
>> from testing to stable.  A copy of the new stable then becomes the
>> new testing with a new name, and packages from unstable continue to
>> trickle in if they stay relatively bug free as development progresses.
>> Some packages may never leave unstable if they never become bug free
>> enough.  So sid/unstable will never become a release.
>
> No, but won't sid/unstable eventually become sid/testing and sid/testing eventually become sid/stable and be a release?

As Lennart said, no.  testing and stable releases have other names
(from "Toy Story"), and whatever is testing now will eventually become
stable.  So ... your logic is sound but it doesn't apply here - it
took me a while to wrap my head around this as well.  Look at it this
way: testing and stable with their names are "releases," while
sid/unstable isn't so much a "release" or even a deliberate grouping
of packages, it's just a test platform.  So Sid is always Sid, and Sid
is always unstable.  Stuff from unstable trickles into testing when
it's considered reasonably tested/usable, and then it becomes part of
a named testing release.  But Sid stays Sid.  Clear as mud?  Good!
Sorry about that ... just wait a bit and it'll probably soak in.

>>> To move to sid, I found a page that said to add:
>>>
>>>      deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
>>>
>>> to sources.list and then:
>>>
>>>      apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
>>>
>>> *Then* do I remove all the references to lenny from my sources.list file?  I have a later kernel from backports; will that be upgraded too?
>
> Can someone confirm?

Sounds about right: basically you would change any occurrence of the
word "testing" (or "stable" if that's what you're using) to "sid" or
"unstable".  Either the name or the "status" works.  Then update and
probably "full-upgrade" rather than "upgrade".  Kernels aren't usually
installed automatically (my experience, don't know the official
policy), but even if one is, the old one should still be there and
usable: they aren't removed automatically for sure.  (If it offers any
reassurance, I did the name search-and-replace dance many times with
Ubuntu installs - now that I'm running Debian almost exclusively I
tend to leave my systems on "testing" pretty much all the time.)

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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