I had enough trouble with this at the last Debian release, and came close enough to having trouble with it again this time, that I want to make sure the solution is available and findable for anyone else who may need it.
For anyone who uses 'apt-get update' - and, I suspect, any other tool than 'apt' itself - to update the list of available packages from the new release, you're at least moderately likely to see the update attempt fail with error messages like the following: > E: Repository 'http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable InRelease' changed its > 'Codename' value from 'buster' to 'bullseye' > N: This must be accepted explicitly before updates for this repository can be > applied. See apt-secure(8) manpage for details. If you used the label 'buster' instead of 'stable' in your sources.list, you may see complaints about a change in the 'Suite' value instead. The error message directs you to the apt-secure(8) man page. This man page does document the reason why this error happens (although not in a very clear or discoverable fashion), but provides no hint about how to explicitly accept the change and allow the update to proceed. That is apparently because the fancy new 'apt' front-end will detect this situation and prompt you to accept the change interactively, but none of the others necessarily will. The actual solution will depend on which apt front-end you're using. For the front-end which is also called 'apt', a simple 'apt update' will apparently be enough; it will apparently prompt you to accept the change interactively, and if you do so, will proceed accordingly. For the 'apt-get' front-end, the necessary solution is to run the command 'apt-get update --allow-releaseinfo-change'. For other front-ends (aptitude, synaptic, others?), there are probably commands which can make it possible to get past this, but I don't know what any of them are. There have been bug reports about this misdirecting documentation, and the lack of any usefully-discoverable pointer to the actual solution, dating back as far as 2017; the bug has been acknowledged, possible solutions have been proposed, but nothing has apparently actually made it into the release as of yet. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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