[clug] Advice request on upgrade to Debian Squeeze - local mirrors?

[Felix Karpfen]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:09:45 +1100, Hal Ashburner wrote:


> Change your TPG plan, Felix, They offer more quota than you could
> possibly need for cheap.
> http://www.tpg.com.au/products_services/adsl2plus_pricing.php?/pricing/
broadbandoffnet

According to the link, "broadbandoffnet" is not available in my neck of 
the woods (Weston Creek).
> 
> Dist-upgrades on debian stable have a 100% success rate for me having
> done them countless times.

I can give you two distinct reasons why I failed in my only two previous 
attempts ; the first was due to an oversight (on my part) and the second 
was due to a misunderstanding (on my part) of the of the offered choices.
> 
> On stable the only packages that will get updated by a dist-upgrade are
> those that require security fixes.

Does not sound right to me. From hazy recollections, my first dist-
upgrade included a major re-organisation due to the introduction of 
"Xorg" and my second dist-upgrade threatened to change the identification 
of my HD partitions from "hdx" to "sdx" (which did not happen but is 
still being flagged as a possible change in the current "dist-upgrade")

> Even if something inexplicably
> failed, you have your home directory backed up anyway so you can abandon
> an install and start again if required, right? Right?

Right, if the dist-upgrade is actually a clean install of the OS and the 
information in my "home" partition is added as an afterthought.  That 
works - after a fashion. I used to do that in long-past RedHat days when 
that was the only upgrade route on offer.  I have never done that since 
switching to Debian.

> 
> If you don't have your home directory backed up they you $%&*#$@ well
> should. 

Thanks to a nifty package called "snapshot" (pointed out to me by CLUG), 
my "home" directory is backed up every Sunday (at 2.45 am).

> 
> Ok so you install your whole system from dvds.

Looks as though I will have to bite the bullet (again!).

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Felix


-- 
Felix Karpfen
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)