Weblog entry #163 for simonw
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#163
Dotdeb.org & planning to get to Etch
Posted by simonw on Wed 11 Apr 2007 at 10:35
One of my boxes routine update complained about "dotdeb.org" not having Packages.gz.
My fault, I had "stable" rather than "sarge", and "dotdeb.org" has correctly renamed the "stable" that was "sarge", "oldstable".
s/stable/sarge/
Like how many of you had this wrong somewhere more crucial? ;)
Wrote to Guillaume as I didn't see any plans for the future of dotdeb.org anywhere, and I guess it is important to other peoples upgrade plans as well. If I get an answer, I'll blog about it here.
Those plotting Sarge to Etch upgrades might want to reread my earlier blog entry;
http://www.debian-administration.org/users/simonw/weblog/146
Since it answered a fair few questions I've seen on various lists about the issues in upgrading servers to Etch. Is there a central Wiki page for this?
My fault, I had "stable" rather than "sarge", and "dotdeb.org" has correctly renamed the "stable" that was "sarge", "oldstable".
s/stable/sarge/
Like how many of you had this wrong somewhere more crucial? ;)
Wrote to Guillaume as I didn't see any plans for the future of dotdeb.org anywhere, and I guess it is important to other peoples upgrade plans as well. If I get an answer, I'll blog about it here.
Those plotting Sarge to Etch upgrades might want to reread my earlier blog entry;
http://www.debian-administration.org/users/simonw/weblog/146
Since it answered a fair few questions I've seen on various lists about the issues in upgrading servers to Etch. Is there a central Wiki page for this?
Comments on this Entry
Hmm, I fell foul of this trying to do a Sarge install using my trusty Sarge 'netinstall' CD. By default it writes a sources.list that points to 'stable' and you end up in a right mess as it tries to complete a base install of Sarge from the Etch sources! Workaround easy enough by writing your own sources.list.
But using specific names like Sarge or Etch looks like a better idea.
But using specific names like Sarge or Etch looks like a better idea.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (85.22.xx.xx) on Fri 13 Apr 2007 at 08:41
The release notes for Etch contain detailled upgrade instructions and also cover the most common upgrade issues.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (195.166.xx.xx) on Mon 16 Apr 2007 at 17:31
I've just done the Sarge/Dotdeb -> Etch upgrade. It wasn't lots of fun.
I'm not going to go in to reasons, but I really regret using Dotdeb on Sarge instead of Ubuntu. Thankfully I only installed it on one server.
Well, you live and learn.
I'm not going to go in to reasons, but I really regret using Dotdeb on Sarge instead of Ubuntu. Thankfully I only installed it on one server.
Well, you live and learn.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
I would actually be interested in the "reasons," as I am thinking about doing the same upgrade process since Etch now has such things as MySQL 5. But if I'm going to run into problems, I'll have to rethink my plan.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (195.166.xx.xx) on Tue 17 Apr 2007 at 09:25
Well the reasons are mainly related to Dotdeb more than the upgrade. DD seemed to start shipping broken PHP5 packages at 5.2, in particular, problems with the XML parsers. All my WP RSS outputs broke and so did a meta search engine we wrote. That was only recently though, however pecl has never worked on the server and MySQL would suffer frequent InnoDb corruption (although that's probably not actually DD's fault)
I had to spend probably a few days hacking a bunch of our stuff because PHP5 was stuffed, and of course I immediately had to un-hack it all as soon as I went back to Debian.
On the upgrade notes, all I noticed was that my Apache config went haywire (missing modules, no idea what happened), and that of course Apache wouldn't start because libapache2-mod-php5 & friends were a newer version number than the one Debian ships, so course they weren't reverted.
I managed to get it all sorted in the end.
Overall my experience with Dotdeb was that the packages were not of the same meticulous quality that Debian ships and that you were left a bit in the dark when you had problems.
I had to spend probably a few days hacking a bunch of our stuff because PHP5 was stuffed, and of course I immediately had to un-hack it all as soon as I went back to Debian.
On the upgrade notes, all I noticed was that my Apache config went haywire (missing modules, no idea what happened), and that of course Apache wouldn't start because libapache2-mod-php5 & friends were a newer version number than the one Debian ships, so course they weren't reverted.
I managed to get it all sorted in the end.
Overall my experience with Dotdeb was that the packages were not of the same meticulous quality that Debian ships and that you were left a bit in the dark when you had problems.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]