Notes on Upgrading to Debian 2.0

In the following I summarize my experience from upgrading Debian 1.3 to Debian 2.0:

1) autoup.sh

• Download autoup.sh (version 0.32) or look for a possibly newer version at http://www.taz.net.au/autoup/
• Read the corresponding README!
• script deb2.0.log
  (This produces a protocol of all that follows until the end (exit or logout).)
• chmod a+x autoup.sh
• Mount our Debian server e.g. on /ftp
• ./autoup.sh
  When asked say m for using the local mirror and /ftp/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-i386/ for the path of the stable (hamm) distribution.
  If that comes to a premature end, rerun it; if there are unresolved "Errors were encountered while processing:" the corresponding packages need to be installed by hand (i.e. dpkg -i). NB: There are necessarily such error messages before the upgrade of perl is complete; only error messages immediately before autoup.sh says

  I have tried to remove any packages that would be broken by the upgrade,
  but I may have missed some.  If any "Errors were encountered while
  processing:" messages appear above, those packages must be removed or
  replaced with their equivalent from hamm.
  
  press [ENTER] to continue"
  

  require your attention.

2) dselect

• Now run dselect to update the rest of the system. Note that the path for the "_non-US_ binary dir" is now debian-non-US/dists/stable/non-US/binary-i386.
  As "_local_ binary dir" you may choose none or /debian/dists/proposed-updates/ (this contains recent updates which have not yet made it into the newest release; read the *.changes files in ftp://tph16.tuwien.ac.at/pub/debian/dists/proposed-updates/ for information on these updates)
• Hints:
  • Installing the new version of gv requires xaw3dg. If you do not like the changes in the layout of all windows this entails (I don't), put gv on hold to keep the old version.
  • xaw3dg breaks axe if you do not also install xaw-wrappers.
  • Do not select tm unless you really want to. It seems to cause problems with emacs.
  • You should select xlib6g-dev; otherwise some icons and fonts may be missing.
  • The new versions of pine are no longer distributed as binaries and need to be compiled. It's therefore simpler to keep the old version from bo.
  • wu-ftpd has been renamed to wu-ftpd-academ; select the latter!
  • By the way, sendfile is an interesting new way to exchange files asynchronously without ftp or mail+uuencode. Install it!
  • Some packages (e.g. xtar, libc4) have been orphaned and are no longer provided for the time being. If you need them, don't remove them (or install from one of our Debian 1.3 CD backups).
  • You may ignore dependency warnings like "gv depends on elf-x11r6lib, elf-x11r6lib does not appear to be available" if you have xlib6 installed.
• The first run of dselect probably aborts because of "too many errors". Just rerun Install.
• Don't install the package plugger_2.2-1.deb! It breaks libc5-based netscape!

3) fix up wtmp and utmp

  shutdown -r now

  cd /var/log
  mv wtmp wtmp.libc5
  touch wtmp
  cd /var/run
  cp /dev/null utmp

  shutdown -r now

4) further fixes

• xcontrib: needs manual install because the version number of the hamm version has not changed:
  dpkg -i /mnt/debian/hamm/hamm/binary-i386/x11/xcontrib_*.deb (the bo version doesn't work any longer)
• lyx: same thing:
  dpkg -i /mnt/debian/hamm/non-free/binary-i386/libs/libforms0.88_*.deb (if libforms0.88 was not yet installed)
  dpkg -i /mnt/debian/hamm/contrib/binary-i386/text/lyx_*.deb
• wine: also not upgraded by dselect because versions now begin with 0.0.xxxx.
• If you use xbiff you need a symbolic link from /usr/spool to /var/spool. Such a link was there up to Debian-1.3 but is now considered obsolete. However, xbiff doesn't know that (yet). To fix it do:

    cd /usr
    ln -s ../var/spool/ spool
  

• in old ~/.fvwmrc files the icon paths may need to be updated:

  PixmapPath /usr/X11R6/include/X11/pixmaps/
  IconPath   /usr/X11R6/include/X11/bitmaps/
  

• If you use lilo to boot DOS from a second disk, notice that the new version of lilo (20) no longer supports the any loaders. Read /usr/doc/lilo/INCOMPAT.gz !
• If after logging in to other (non-Debian-2.0) machines you encounter problems, check the TERM setting there. If it's xterm-debian, you need to set TERM=xterm there either manually or in the remote .bashrc file. For more information on X under Debian read /usr/doc/xbase/README.Debian and/or look up X Strike Force.