Dear Debian, Thanks for your patience. I just went back to square one, deleted the netinstall ISO, deleted the 3 VMs I had, made a new one. I downloaded a fresh netinstall, made a new VirtBox, and installed. One thing I did different, I checked the Mate desktop box, but I didn't un-check the gnome box. I chose to use the lightdm, but other than that, I have both gnome and Mate. >From that point on, I did the edit to sources.list, dist upgrade, and that worked without any evident problem. Next, I started firefox and went to VBox, downloaded the latest version of the Guest Additions. (Which is 458 as I write this.) Did this ~ Install Virtualbox Guest Additions on Debian Log into Debian (Guest OS) as root and update your software. apt-get update && apt-get upgrade Install required packages for building kernel modules. apt-get install build-essential module-assistant Prepare your system for building kernel module m-a prepare ============= ~ and reboot.
=========== mike@debian ----------- OS: Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid x86_64 Host: VirtualBox 1.2 Kernel: 6.5.0-4-amd64 Uptime: 1 min Packages: 1823 (dpkg) Shell: bash 5.2.21 Resolution: 1920x951 DE: MATE 1.26.1 WM: Metacity (Marco) Theme: Menta [GTK2/3] Icons: menta [GTK2/3] Terminal: mate-terminal Terminal Font: Monospace 15 CPU: Intel i7-6700 (4) @ 3.408GHz GPU: 00:02.0 VMware SVGA II Adapter Memory: 693MiB / 7938MiB ============ After a week of struggle, we appear to be back exactly where Debian sid should be, with the possible exception of the gnome desktop. Whether that has any bearing on the matter or not, I don't know, but it did strike me during the install, that perhaps I should leave it in, because gnome3 is the default desktop, so the Debs would be developing for compatibility with that first ~ Remove it, and that might break things .... I remain gratefully yours, Mike On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 1:52 AM Michael Thompson <kneedragon1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Debian, > > Minor update, it works!!! > > I know I did one thing differently, which possibly influenced things, I > don't know what you guys and the team did. > > First, check that the 2 remaining lines in sources.list ended with > non-free-firmware, as in ~ > deb http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free-firmware > deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free-firmware > > > ~ when I ran the dist-upgrade command, I got a couple of places where it > said something like 'Errors were encountered by dpkg in dealing with ~ > > linux-image-6.5.0-4-amd64 ~and~ linux-image-amd64 > > ~ so, before rebooting, I went > sudo apt install linux-image-6.5.0-4-amd64 linux-image-amd64 > ~ predictably, it said something along the lines of "Those are already the > newest version. What's your problem?" > > I also ran sudo apt autoremove, which reclaimed a surprising amount of > disk space... well over 200MB. > Then I rebooted and now it works. Yipee!! > > I know something changed, because the previous dist-upgrade went chasing > 1100 files. This attempt went after 1098. Two less files. Ergo, something > changed ~ in addition to the non-free-*firmware*. > Thank you Debian, congratulations on your excellent work. > > I remain yours gratefully, > > Mike > > On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 7:24 PM Michael Thompson <kneedragon1...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Dear Debian, >> >> I just tried it again, and got the same result. >> If you download the standard vanilla Debian netinstall ISO, create a >> VBox, and install, it works fine. I just confirmed this by downloading a >> fresh one. I know it's a new one because it includes the non-free-firmware >> part in the sources.list, which is new. A netinstall ISO from last week >> didn't mention firmware. >> >> 1st login, make user a member of sudo. >> useradd mike sudo >> Login as mike, >> sudo pluma >> as root, open & edit the /etc/apt/sources.list. Delete everything and add >> 2 lines ~ >> deb http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free-firmware >> deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free-firmware >> Save and close. >> Now, as root or as mike, >> sudo apt update ; sudo apt dist upgrade >> Standard method of upgrading from vanilla to sid. >> Problem is, it breaks your networking. >> It loses your nic and any reference to it, any settings, any ip address >> ... >> You cannot add something else because there is no network. >> You cannot update or install anything. I sent a big email a couple of >> days ago, which covered how you might work around that, but so far, it has >> not been fixed. >> By my reckoning, it's been 6 days now. >> If my understanding is correct, then nobody anywhere can install a >> vanilla Debian and upgrade to sid while this problem remains. >> Yes, I am aware there are other install ISOs, there's about 80 of them. >> I did find one that is a daily build of Trixie, and that has no problems, >> although I didn't try to upgrade it to sid. I'm rather pleased to have a >> working Trixie and I don't want to break it. >> One (very long & tedious) way around this, I mentioned in my previous >> email. It does work, but you might as well create a new Linux from Scratch. >> It's a lot of messing about to achieve something that should be quite >> straightforward. >> There are something over a hundred sites and pages up, that give >> simple logical instructions about how you install Debian and upgrade to >> sid. Every one of those pages is currently wrong. >> >> Yours respectfully, >> >> Mike >> >
