On Sunday 03 October 2021 12:11:13 am Patrick Bartek wrote: > On Sat, 2 Oct 2021 11:57:51 -0400 > "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <r...@rtellason.com> wrote: > > > In recent messaging here I touched on how I'd determined that my > > workstation was way behind being current. Apparently I needed to go > > 8->9->10->11. I tried the first of those steps, and things did not > > go well in a number of ways... > > First, back up all your data before starting the dist-upgrade series.
I did back up a bunch of stuff, and it's a good thing I did, or I would have lost a lot... > Also, read and follow the Release Notes of dist-upgrade for each version. Where are these to be found? > Reboot after each version upgrade, then do an apt-get update/upgrade, etc. Are you suggesting that I go through that for all of the versions, one after another? > > For some reason, the software decided to remove virtualbox. Which > > is a real problem, because it's inside a virtual machine that I do > > all of my mail, so I couldn't get at my mail for a while. In > > Synaptic Package Manager if I try to install it I get the following > > error message: > > > > "Package virtualbox has no available version, but exists in the > > database. This typically means that the package was mentioned in a > > dependency and never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not > > available with the contents of sources.list" > > > > I got temporarily past this by installing 8 on this laptop I'm > > currently typimg on. Some things are decidedly less convenient. > > Complete the dist-upgrade for all versions, then reinstall VirtualBox. > Be sure you saved all your VMs before the dist-upgrade(s). They > may be deleted. Yes, I did save them and will do so again before I proceed, since I'm modifying this one as I type here... > I don't use the VB version in the Debian repos, but download and install the > .deb directly from their web site. During the > install the VB repo will be set up. I did do a download from their site. But it's not clear to me where I need to put it and how to tell the package management software about it. > > Firefox is majorly different, apparently having gone from 68.9.0 --> > > 78.14.0esr. It no longer uses the font that I'm telling it to, and > > for some odd reason won't play any youtube videos any more. Instead > > I see a message on the screen that says "if video doesn't start > > momentarily restart your device". Huh? > > > > Konqueror is also broken, I get "Could not start proess Unable to > > create io-slave: klauncher said: Error loading 'kio_file'"... > > > > Trying to open a file with Okular gets me a similar message. > > Complete the entire dist-upgrade before trying to fix problems. The problems > may fix themselves. For all of the versions, straight through to 11? > > I don't see any way to back out of these changes, or any obvious > > place to look for where the problems are. Suggestions welcomed. > > I avoid dist-upgrading, if I can because of such problems, and do a > clean install of the newest version on a free partition keeping the old > install as fallback in case something goes awry. I have done similar in the passt, with Slackware. Which isually involves stickinng another hard drive in the machine. I don't have one handy at present, though, and probably won't be getting one in the near-term. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin