On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 09:37:14AM -0400, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote: > Hi, > > On 2021-07-25 3:42 a.m., Gunnar Gervin wrote: > > Polyna. > > I always have heard it's better to put all documents, files, photos etc > > in a usb or external harddisk. And do a clean reinstall of the updated > > distro. > Can you explain a bit further... ? > > If I follow what I read in your message... > You are telling me that : > It is recommended to backup user's personal data > Do a clean reinstall > When Debian publishes update ? > > What type of update ? > Point release ? > Release ? > Point releases should just "upgrade". After all, they're mostly collections of bugfixes - at that point, if you've been updating regularly, there's very little difference.
When it comes to doing a major release upgrade: 10-11, say, it's always not a _bad_ idea to back up documents files and so on, just in case something goes wrong, but it's not vital by any means. If you are repartitioning disks / changing boot method from Legacy -> UEFI than it might be a good idea to save off all data and re-install from scratch depending on how much you're doing - but there's no absolute requiremnt. There have been a couple of transitions that had the potential to break stuff - the original ELF transition, way back, sysvinit -> systemd - but otherwise you could take a Debian 4.0 say and update it to Debian 10 by using standard systm tools. > This look pretty heavy to me...and sounds much more like something that > is done on the Windows world. Absolutely. I don't think it is true of Debian. It is, however, the recommended way of dealing with Red Hat/CentOS/Almalinux/Rocky Linux at major version change. [There is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux script that _may_ do this - but folks have had signifncant problems if there are any third party packages installed - sometimes to the extent of including EPEL packages.] All the very best, as ever, Andy Cater > > Why would it be needed to do a clean reinstall ? > If you work properly and don't litter around then everything in your > system is registered as file in the package manager and the > configuration are preserved thru configuration file litigation (ask you > what to do when a config file has been changed from default). > > Would you have the reference regarding this ? > > Are talking about clean the apt cache before doing upgrade ? > > Explain more because this smell like non-sense to me. > > BR, > > geg > > > > On Sun, 25 Jul 2021, 04:41 Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside, > > <deb...@polynamaude.com <mailto:deb...@polynamaude.com>> wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > On 2021-07-24 9:33 p.m., David Wright wrote: > > > On Sat 24 Jul 2021 at 19:52:36 (-0400), Polyna-Maude > > Racicot-Summerside wrote: > > >> Here are the message I get after my debmirror when I do apt-get > > update > > >> > > >> Err:31 file:/mnt/mirror/debian buster-updates/main amd64 Contents > > (deb) > > >> File not found - > > >> /mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/main/Contents-amd64 (2: > > No such > > >> file or directory) > > >> Reading package lists... Done > > >> E: Failed to fetch > > >> file:/mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster/main/Contents-amd64 File > > not found > > >> - /mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster/main/Contents-amd64 (2: No such > > file > > >> or directory) > > >> E: Failed to fetch > > >> file:/mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/main/Contents-amd64 > > File > > >> not found - > > /mnt/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/main/Contents-amd64 > > >> (2: No such file or directory) > > >> > > >> The command I used for creating the mirror is > > >> > > >> debmirror --all --progress --verbose --method=http > > >> --dist=buster,buster-updates,buster-backports > > >> --section=main,contrib,non-free --arch=amd64,i386 --rsync-extra=none > > >> --source --i18n --keyring > > /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg > > >> --root=debian --host=debian.mirror.iweb.ca > > <http://debian.mirror.iweb.ca> /mnt/mirror/debian > > >> > > >> Got idea ? > > > > > > --getcontents ? > > > > > Giving this one a try.... > > > I'm not sure you have close to a clue what my problem is. > Because when I simply change my repository to the usual Debian one, I > can do my apt cache update properly. > > > > > > Cheers, > > > David. > > > > > > > Thanks > > > > -- > > Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside > > -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development > > > > -- > Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside > -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development >