On Thursday 29 August 2002 09:59, Barker, Gerald A (MD) wrote: > I installed Debian 3.0 off cdroms. Everything was fine. > I then wanted to keep up to date with the updates so I edited the > sources file to update then upgrade off the web. I started this and > downloaded some files but then realized that I had put unstable > instead of testing in my sources file. I think testing is what I > want since that is what I used before I installed 3.0. > > 1) Is testing what I want? > 2) What do I do now? I haven't installed any of the unstable but how > do I keep it from installing? Do I do apt-get clean? then edit > sources to testing and start over with the down load?
Assuming you aren't after an installation that only gets security updates and the occasional new package (i.e. one that changes as minimumly as possible), testing is a good choice. Along with your edit change from unstable to testing, you might also want to add: deb http://security.debian.org testing/updates main contrib non-free to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. This will give a priority to security updates (i.e. they won't have to wait two weeks in unstable before you can get them from testing). It sounds like you stopped just in time. With sources.list changed, you should now be able to run: apt-get update again and convince APT that testing is the way to go. After that I usually do: apt-get -du upgrade which tells me what changes will be made and downloads the new packages without installing them. When the download finishes I then do: apt-get -u upgrade and answer questions as required. It's possible that some packages will be held back with a simple "upgrade", so occasionally you might want to do: apt-get -du dist-upgrade and see it there are any new packages that are being held back due to conflicts with packages that are "less important" than the new ones. When you've finished the upgrade: apt-get autoclean will purge old downloaded packages that have been upgraded, as well as any unstable ones you didn't install, while still keeping around the most recent ones (handy if you want to use the new packages to upgrade other machines -- details on doing this are messy though). Also, check out: http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=535 The author may not don't know why Sid is the name of the unstable tree, but it's a pretty good article in general.
