Debian: Upgrading to Woody?

[[P]Diablos]

Hello, I have been thinking about upgrading my Potato version of Debian to Woody. I have a couple questions regarding this. For starters, how do I do it? I think I saw somewhere it's something like 'apt-get upgrade-distro' or something like that. Is that the best, or only, way to do it?

Besides how to do it, I also want to know what exactly I'd be getting by upgrading to woody. My understanding is I'd be upgraded to X version 4 and would be able to apt-get a lot more new programs. Also, is everything upgraded when I go to woody, all my libraries etc?

Last question, would upgrading to woody hurt or mess up any of the programs, wm's or desktop manager's I'm currently using? Thanks in advance for the info =)

[Strike]

To know what you are getting, you can look at the package listing on www.debian.org (http://www.debian.org) (click on "Debian Packages" on the side, and you can search for packages in "testing" (which is what Woody is for now)).

To do the upgrade, you need to update your sources.list to point to sources to "testing" instead of "stable" or "woody" instead of "potato". Once you replace all of those (which is a one-liner in vim) then you do apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade.

[[P]Diablos]

:mad: well upgrading to woody has proven to be the biggest nightmare. After I edited my sources.list, ran apt-get update, and ran apt-get dist-upgrade, I was met with various errors, dependency problems, and was no longer able to startx. I tinkered around for a few hours, started getting somewhere, then it all went to hell so I decided to just reinstall debian.

OK, I have the newest Debian Potato CD. I start up the install, then get to the part where it asks me to configure APT. At this part, I've tried installing potato stuff off the CD, then upgrading to Woody. I've tried installing stuff off the debian website then upgrading to woody. I've also edited the sources.list manually to point towards the testing section of the debian website during the setup of APT. No matter what way of configuring APT I try, I ALWAYS get this same error now. I'll start installing woody packages / upgrading to woody, and after a few packages are installed and configured, APT-GET just stops working. Whenever I try to APT-GET something now, I get this error:

perl: error while loading shared libraries: libdb.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
E: Sub-process /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt returned an error code (127)
E: Failure running script /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt

Like I said, I can apt-get things for a while, but once a couple woody packages are installed and I seem to be getting somewhere, this thing ALWAYS pops up. And I HAVE found the libdb.so.3 file, it's in my /lib folder but for some reason APT-GET can't find it anymore.

Could someone PLEASE help me with this error or tell me a way to upgrade to Woody successfully right after installing, or during the installation, of potato off a CD? thanks..

[Strike]

From the #debian bot apt on IRC:


<Strike> potato->woody
<apt> methinks potato->woody is edit /etc/apt/sources.list, change all mentions of "potato" or "stable" (except security.debian.org) to "woody". Then "apt-get update", "apt-get install apt-utils debconf" and "apt-get dist-upgrade", et voila! Also ask me about "woody install warnings"
<Strike> woody install warnings
<apt> it has been said that woody install warnings is ask me about "libdb3 problem" if you're getting libdb.so.3 errors, or try "apt-get install perl perl-5.6-base libperl5.6 debconf apt-utils" for miscellaneous perl issues
<Strike> libdb3 problem
<apt> methinks libdb3 problem is get http://www.grulic.org.ar/~mdione/libdb3.tar.gz, unpack it, cp the lib to /lib, rerun ldconfig (fixes the stuff that happens when stable->{unstable,testing})

So, these things should help

[ 20 August 2001: Message edited by: Strike ]

[[P]Diablos]

ok, I extracted and copied the file to my /lib folder, that got rid of the error. I then did apt-get install apt-utils debconf followed by apt-get dist-upgrade. And lo and behold, no errors!! I just now finished installing X 4.0 and Enlightenment, and they work!! Now I just have to apt-get some programs and I'm baack in business. Thanks alot Strike, ya helped me out tremendously :)

[Strike]

Glad to see that got it all up and running. The potato to woody transition has been a bit bumpy for a while (hence those factoids in the Debian infobot), but hey that's why it's "testing" I guess :)

[Slackmonster]

Don't know if you have already checked it out, but there is a pretty good intro to the wonders of apt in the NHF section. It helped me out a ton today.