[snip] Would I be reasonably okay if when I upgrade my currently working setup doing apt-get upgrade, if apt-get makes no comments other than number of packages and size of download doing the upgrade? This would seem to not break anything other than whatever bugs I discover in/during testing.
If apt-get makes comments about various packages I could just wait until a later date when the are ready. With a working system upgrading for me will only be a periodic thing. The only time it would be an issue would be if I attempted to install software which depended on newer packages than I have. Apt-get will handle that anyway. > > > One of the things that'd be *really* helpful is logs of the upgrades. If > > > you're using apt-get at the commandline, then it's trivially easy to > > > get good logs: just run "script" first. [...] > > I did my upgrades from apt-get. I am on a PC at work. What are you > > referring to here as "script". Is this a commandline option for apt-get? > > Here's an example of me logging my attempt to say "echo hi": > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ script > Script started, file is typescript > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ echo hi > hi > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ exit > Script done, file is typescript > > it logs every character that appears. So ./typescript after the above > looks like: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ cat typescript > Script started on Wed Apr 25 17:03:09 2001 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ echo hi > hi > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ exit > > Script done on Wed Apr 25 17:03:11 2001 Thanks for the lesson. I believe I'll start doing that as a rule using the -q option as suggested by Toby. This will also provide a learning opportunity for me. > When using apt-get, you'll get all sorts of messy stuff related to the > percentage counting, but that's okay. > > > What I know in the process I took over several complete reinstalls on a > > clean drive is this, dist-upgrade to Woody left me with an unusable > > system due to dependencies not met. Or should I say Gnome/X11 were in a > > state of disrepair. > > The more precise the better. It's not clear what happened in the above; > did you let apt remove packages that you didn't want removed that broke > gnome for you? Or did apt come up with a reasonable upgrade without > removing packages that then didn't work after it all got installed? That > sort of information is pretty important as far as fixing whatever went > wrong goes. > > apt doesn't really let you have any unmet dependencies on your system, > so it's unlikely that that's the real explanation for your system being > unusable. There would've had to have been some other step inbetween. I believe my initial issues in the first upgrades was X. The configuration setup, symlinks or somesuch was broken in Woody but had been fixed in Sid. This I got from the mailing list. The Woody upgrade did remove a lot of the Gnome stuff but did not replace. As I didn't get thru X I didn't really see Gnome. I'm comfortable with my current setup. Uptime is now at 2 days, seldom get that with Windows/Mac. I see no reason for my uptime to keep going. :) I have changed my sources from Sid to Woody. > > I would rather be a positive contributor than a negative detractor. I'll > > be a good guy and go read the bug page. Is there any other documentation > > on how I can provide usefull data when something fails? > > There *ought* to be, and there *used* to be... Dunno if there is any > nowadays though. Using script is probably a good start. I'll look for some when I have something to contribute. Thanks for the information and help. Jimmie Houchin
