Warty to Hoary Preview upgrade report

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2005 at 12:49:36AM -0600, Ming Hua wrote:

> I downloaded hoary preview CD, and used apt-cdrom to add it to
> /etc/apt/sources.list.  I kept my warty and warty-security archive line
> in sources.list (this may be a problem, see below about my kernel), and
> ran aptitude.  Aptitude labeled a lot of packages to be upgraded, and I
> just upgraded all of them (there were no broken packages).

It's generally best to replace Warty with Hoary, rather than having both in
sources.list simultaneously.

> 1. One thing I noticed was that there are a few questions about
> conffiles that got locally modified and I am asked if I want to keep the
> old one with changes or use the new one comes with the package.  However
> I never remembered changing them in the first place.  And looking at the
> diffs, it doesn't seem I changed them either.  The files are:
>     /etc/udev/scripts/{cdsymlinks,ide-devfs,scsi-devfs}.sh
>     /etc/dbus-1/event.d/20hal
>     /etc/gimp/2.0/{gtkrc,ps-menurc,templaterc,gimprc}
>     /etc/console-tools/config
> I have seen similar things using Debian sid, but I've never upgraded
> from one releases to another (I started using Debian from woody).  So I
> am not sure if this is common, but they are annoying since it interrupts
> the upgrading process, and I had to be around to answer them.  And in
> most cases, I don't know what (exactly) are these file for.  Since the
> default is to keep the old files, I am afraid if a new linux user
> answers this questions, he is going to just press enter, and new changes
> in configure files are not going to be in the upgraded system.

Martin Pitt has been working on this, and has fixed several such problems
since the preview release.

> 2. I somehow messed up with my kernel packages and ended up with a
> un-bootable system.  As I've said, I kept both the hoary preview CD and
> the warty-security archive in my sources.list, and aptitude labeled my
> linux-image-2.6.8.1-5-386 to be upgraded (from -16.11 to -16.12), and
> also linux-image-2.6.10-4-386 to be installed.  I got some dpkg
> configure failure at the end of the upgrade about some kernel packages,
> and I thought I've seen them before in Debian because I can't remove a
> kernel that is in use, and just rebooted without reading carefully.  It
> turned out I am missing both initrd images in my /boot partition
> (2.6.8.1-5 and 2.6.10-4), and I had to boot from the installation disk,
> mount my system in /target, chroot in, and ran ``dpkg --configure
> --pending'' to get the mkinitrd (in postinst script, I think) to run,
> and solved my problem.  I think I did something wrong, perhaps my
> sources.list, but I don't know for sure.

This sounds like it could be a serious bug, but I have not encountered it in
any of my upgrade testing, and unless you saved a copy of the exact messages
you saw, there isn't much that we can do to diagnose the problem.

> 3. After the upgrade, aptitude labels some (uninstalled, mostly python)
> packages broken due to 2.3->2.4 transition, but most of them are solved
> after I add hoary archive to my sources.list again and upgraded.

Again?  Did you remove it?

> However today after update I still have one broken dependency:
> libgal2.2-1 is getting upgraded from 2.2.3-0ubuntu1 to
> 2.2.3ubuntu1-1ubuntu1 (the version looks funny by the way), both
> recommends libgal2.2-common, but only libgal2.2-common 2.2.3-0ubuntu1 is
> available, and it depends on exactly libgal2.2-1 (= 2.2.3-0ubuntu1).
> Also, libgal2.2-1 is not depended by anything and it seems hoary has
> libgal2.4-0, so I wonder why is there a new libgal2.2-1 package.

libgal2.2-common was in main in Warty, and moved out to universe for Hoary.
What do you mean when you say it is broken?  libgal2.2 should be upgraded at
the expense of libgal2.2-common, which should be removed.

Multiple versions of library packages are often maintained in parallel in
order to provide for smooth transitions.  This is normal.

> 4. Many python2.3 packages and a few library packages are labeled
> obselete by aptitude now.  I know they are there because they are not in
> hoary anymore, and aptitude didn't label them ``automatic dependency''.
> I am not sure what a synaptic upgrade will result, and I know tools like
> deborphan, but does ubuntu team aims at removing obselete and unused
> programs during upgrade?

We do not currently have a convenient facility for doing this automatically.
Of course you can do this by pressing '-' or '_' on the section header in
aptitude.

-- 
 - mdz