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[SOLVED] Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

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gurfle
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Joined: 2009-06-04 02:08
Location: Seattle, Washington, US

[SOLVED] Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#1 Post by gurfle »

Updated Debian 9: 9.2 released press@debian.org wrote:As a special case for this point release, those using the "apt-get" tool
to perform the upgrade will need to ensure that the "dist-upgrade"
command is used, in order to update to the latest kernel packages. Users
of other tools such as "apt" and "aptitude" should use the "upgrade"
command.


Miscellaneous Bugfixes
----------------------

Due to an oversight while preparing the point release, the usual
update to the "base-files" package to reflect the new version was
unfortunately not included. An updated package will be made available
via "stretch-updates" in the near future.
Does this mean the following needs to be done:

1) Make sure you use a debian mirror, as in:
cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep 'debian stretch contrib main"

Code: Select all

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch contrib main
followed by
apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade :?:

When I do that, I see (as mentioned), no base-files package update. Does that matter, or is this message really premature, and a full and safe upgrade is not possible at all until the next "stretch-update" in the near future, as stated?
Last edited by gurfle on 2017-10-10 02:18, edited 2 times in total.

pendrachken
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Re: Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#2 Post by pendrachken »

It just means that you have to run dist-upgrade to install packages that either will cause other packages to be un-installed, or have to pull in other packages as depends.


In this case, without digging into the why from any mailing lists or anything, it seems it's from the kernel. My VMs the kernel gets held back on a normal upgrade and three specific kernel packages get pulled in as depends on dist-upgrade ( hence the needing dist-upgrade ).


As a side note: as long as you are pretty recent on keeping your system up to date you can usually just run dist-upgrade, as long as you are not actually trying to move to a different major point release.
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gurfle
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Re: Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#3 Post by gurfle »

pendrachken wrote:It just means that you have to run dist-upgrade to install packages that either will cause other packages to be un-installed, or have to pull in other packages as depends.
Thanks for this concise description of those differences between the simple apt-get upgrade and dist-upgrade commands. I am still curious though about what the consequence is of the "oversight" mentioned in the message regarding the non appearance of the "base-file" package update in the upgrade. Could upgrading without that possibly cause dependency problems - either right away, or later - or is it more of a "cosmetic" consistency issue?

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pylkko
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Re: Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#4 Post by pylkko »

Most likely it means "only cosmeticc". I performed the update using

Code: Select all

apt update && apt upgrade
That is not using apt-get (I don't use it at all). After that I noticed that

Code: Select all

lsb_release -a
gave as output Debian 9.1, and not 9.2. This is probably the reason since the base-files package is:
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/base-files wrote:This package contains the basic filesystem hierarchy of a Debian system, and several important miscellaneous files, such as /etc/debian_version, /etc/host.conf, /etc/issue, /etc/motd, /etc/profile, and others, and the text of several common licenses in use on Debian systems.
The people involved apparently forgot to update 9.2 into /etc/debian_version....

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gurfle
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Re: Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#5 Post by gurfle »

pylkko wrote:The people involved apparently forgot to update 9.2 into /etc/debian_version....
Yes, I saw that too, but if you'll pardon my lack of expertise here, the question was, and still is does it matter? I.e.
gurfle wrote:Could upgrading without that possibly cause dependency problems - either right away, or later - or is it more of a "cosmetic" consistency issue?

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pylkko
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Re: Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#6 Post by pylkko »

Well, there are no other fundamental changes to the base package normally. Only the name of the distribution is moved up to the new number... and the kernel version can be changed at will from a bootloader anyway. That is, you can boot Debian 9.2 with almost all versions of the kernel. No, it doesn't seem like these are changes that could brake something down the line and even if they did, it would probably be fixed immediately.

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pylkko
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Re: Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#7 Post by pylkko »

Incidentally, a new update to the package came in today and it now displays version 9.2

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gurfle
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Re: [Solved] Confused about latest (9.2) Update Message

#8 Post by gurfle »

Thanks for all the clarifications. Am clear now, and the update today makes the original question a bit moot.

Thread marked as solved.

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