gablog

On febrary 14th the Debian distribution 5.0 (lenny) passed from testing to stable, so I need to upgrade. Probably I will do it also on production server in office, but now I start whith my home server, since it's my first dist-upgrade.

Backup

First of all a complete backup:

rsync -vrpoglHDIt --delete --progress \
--exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/var/run \
--exclude=/var/lock --exclude=/var/tmp --exclude=/var/backups \
--exclude=/var/cache --exclude=/var/tmp \
--exclude=/mnt/multimedia --exclude=/mnt/mp3 \
/ /mnt/multimedia/backup

It's also possible to use a not_rsync file, but I prefer this way. For future synchronization the only difference is the missing I parameter of rsync. Here what states the man page:

-I, --ignore-times          don't skip files that match size and time
    --size-only             skip files that match in size
    --modify-window=NUM     compare mod-times with reduced accuracy

In this way new synchronization will be more precise. Now a cronjob can be useful.

Upgrade

I'm now ready for the upgrade. I suggest a reading of relase-notes on debian.org site. I modity /etc/apt/sources.list just to point on lenny repository:

deb http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ lenny main
deb-src http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ lenny main
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main

The next command starts session logging, just in case something goes wrong:

script -t 2>~/upgrade-lenny.time -a ~/upgrade-lenny.script

Packet list update

aptitude update

app and aptitude upgrade, plus some dependencies

apt-get install apt

Now I've got the first difference from relases-note, the previous command remove/upgrade/install a lot of packet. Asking in forums and mailinglists I noted that it happened to other people, so I go forward, crossing finger I have to re-install aptitude through apt-get, since the last command removed it. After that I need an update

aptitude install aptitude

Again a lot of packet removed, upgraded and installed.

aptitude search "?false"

A minimal system upgrade:

aptitude upgrade

And now the real upgrade. I don't need to upgrade X, so it's sufficient the following:

aptitude dist-upgrade

At the end I tell lilo that it have to boot with the new 2.6.26-1 kernel

lilo -v

After a deep reading of possible problem I proceed with the reboot:

reboot

Here you are my new lenny-box

g4b0@debian:~$ more /etc/debian_version
5.0
g4b0@debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.26-1-686 #1 SMP Sat Jan 10 18:29:31 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
g4b0@debian:~$

All information in this post is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, use it at your own risk. Happy linuxing!