[SOLVED] Before upgrading to Bullseye

[ticojohn]

I am currently running Buster and am considering an upgrade to Bullseye. I have read Chapter 4. Upgrades from Debian 10 (buster). But I have a couple things that I wonder about. For personal reasons I use Tcl/Tk 8.4, instead of the current Tcl/Tk 8.6, and I use an older version of Grisbi. When I upgrade to Bullseye will the installer try to replace those packages with the most recent releases? Whenever I do an update/upgrade with Buster I don't have any issues so I am hoping that the upgrade to Bullseye will also not try to upgrade those packages. I prefer to NOT pin those packages as I have read that pinned packages may cause upgrade issues. Any words of wisdom would be welcome.

Update: I suppose there could be dependency issues if some of the library files have been updated in Bullseye and are no longer available or are incompatible. Guess I need to do some research and find out.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

For personal reasons I use Tcl/Tk 8.4, instead of the current Tcl/Tk 8.6, and I use an older version of Grisbi. When I upgrade to Bullseye will the installer try to replace those packages with the most recent releases?

For grisbi I think APT will try to upgrade but for tcl it depends on whether you have the dependency package (which is called "tcl") or the versioned package (which is called "tclx.y", where "x.y" is the actual version number) — the former would cause an attempted upgrade (to v8.6) but I don't think the latter would.

How are you currently keeping grisbi and tcl at the older versions? APT will always try to upgrade packages to the highest version listed in the sources file(s) so how are you stopping it from doing that?

You can test to see if they would be upgraded: modify your sources to point to bullseye then run

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# apt update # as root
apt --simulate full-upgrade | pager # as your normal user

The second command will show what would be upgraded (piped to the system pager, press q to exit the view).

The sources can be changed back afterwards then use 'apt update' again to restore the package database to the buster versions.

Alternatively just make a full system backup and go through the upgrade, you can always rollback if you don't like the result. Btrfs is very useful for this because snapshots are instantaneous so you don't have to wait for the backup to be created.

But you already have a full system backup, right?

[ticojohn]

Hey HOAS! As to Tcl and Tk, yes I have a specific version, ie 8.4, and Grisbi 1.0.1 installed so that might be why they don't get upgraded when I do an upgrade with Buster. I installed all of those packages by adding

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deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main 

to sources.list and doing an update only. Installed the packages and then removed that line from the sources.list

There may be a problem using Grisbi 1.0.1 with Bullseye. I was looking at the Grisbi 1.0.1 dependencies and at least one of the dependencies has a newer package name. libgoffice-0.8-0 is now libgoffice-0.10-10, so that could be a problem. However, in my Buster installation, libgoffice-0.10-10 is the default package but I have libgoffice-0.8-0 installed. I am guessing that when I added that line to my sources.list and installed the packages I wanted it probably als0 pulled in the dependencies. Yikes! I am going to catch some s*** on this, aren't I?

[ticojohn]

HOAS, I simulated a full upgrade and got the following

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Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
Calculating upgrade...
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

So maybe it will be okay. I have Buster installed on both a SSD and a HDD(as a fully operational backup), so maybe I will try it on my backup system. And NO, since I have an operational backup I don't have a traditional full system backup. But I do make a weekly backup of my /home directory.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Please show what APT says about the specific packages, for example:

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apt policy grisbi

^ Repeat that command for all of the packages which are "old" and post the full output here. TIA.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I simulated a full upgrade and got the following

That output suggests that you didn't change your sources. Did you edit /etc/apt/sources.list before running my commands? You need to show exactly what you did, provide as much information as you can.

[ticojohn]

I simulated a full upgrade and got the following

That output suggests that you didn't change your sources. Did you edit /etc/apt/sources.list before running my commands? You need to show exactly what you did, provide as much information as you can.

OOPS! Nope. DUMB ME! I missed that statement in your post. I'll try again and post the results.

[ticojohn]

HOAS, once more with feeling. Okay, I did as suggested. The list is huge. I tried to insert it into this post but I get a server error, probably too big. However, I dumped the output to a file in my home directory and then searched the file for references to tcl, tk and grisbi. I found nothing, so may it will be okay to do the upgrade. If you want to see the file I could probably send it to you in a message. Let me know.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I dumped the output to a file in my home directory and then searched the file for references to tcl, tk and grisbi. I found nothing

You can search in the pager with "/" (without the quotation marks). That's why my suggested command piped the output to a pager. And no, I don't want to see the file.

[ticojohn]

I dumped the output to a file in my home directory and then searched the file for references to tcl, tk and grisbi. I found nothing

You can search in the pager with "/" (without the quotation marks). That's why my suggested command piped the output to a pager. And no, I don't want to see the file.

Okay. I have not used a pager and don't know how. Guess I need to do some research. Thanks.
Would the pager be "more" or "less" ? Boy, I am showing my ignorance, aren't I.
UPDATE: Okay, I piped to "more" (and also to "less"). Still don't see anything that might be a problem except for a few packages that will be held back. Not sure why and don't know if that will cause issue. Again, maybe I'll try it on my backup system and see how it goes.

[ticojohn]

HOAS, perhaps the best route would be to do a fresh install of Bullseye on the HDD. Install all the packages I need. Restore the /home directory from my backup and if all goes well then do the same on the SSD. Probably the most trouble free route to take, assuming I can get the versions Tcl8.4, Tk8.4 and Grisbi I want.

Thanks for your help.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Would the pager be "more" or "less" ?

/usr/bin/pager is an part of Debian alternatives system and so may be set to whichever pager program is preferred:

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# update-alternatives --config pager

If the pager confuses you then just grep the command directly:

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apt --simulate full-upgrade | grep 'grisbi\|tcl'

perhaps the best route would be to do a fresh install of Bullseye on the HDD. Install all the packages I need.

But we still don't know how you are stopping APT from upgrading the package versions in your current system. Do you even know that?

To repeat my earlier request:

Please show what APT says about the specific packages, for example:

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apt policy grisbi

^ Repeat that command for all of the packages which are "old" and post the full output here.

I really don't understand why grisbi or "Tcl/tk" hasn't already been upgraded to the current buster versions. Please clarify the situation.

[ticojohn]

To repeat my earlier request:
Please show what APT says about the specific packages, for example:

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apt policy grisbi

^ Repeat that command for all of the packages which are "old" and post the full output here.
I really don't understand why grisbi or "Tcl/tk" hasn't already been upgraded to the current buster versions. Please clarify the situation.

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john@debian:~$ apt policy grisbi
grisbi:
  Installed: 1.0.1-1
  Candidate: 1.0.1-1
  Version table:
     1.2.2-1 500
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages
 *** 1.0.1-1 999
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
john@debian:~$ apt policy tcl8.4
tcl8.4:
  Installed: 8.4.19-5
  Candidate: 8.4.19-5
  Version table:
 *** 8.4.19-5 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
john@debian:~$ apt policy tk8.4
tk8.4:
  Installed: 8.4.19-5
  Candidate: 8.4.19-5
  Version table:
 *** 8.4.19-5 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I don't know why the newer versions of Grisbi, Tcl and Tk aren't being updated. And I really don't want to upgrade them. The new Grisbi appears to have been written to work with wide screen displays and doesn't scale properly on my 5:4 display. And the new version of Tcl/Tk (8.6) will not work with my development program vtcl (8.4), and the new version of vtcl (8.6) quite frankly sucks. As I said previously, when I look at the simulated upgrade I see no references to any of the packages to be updated. Anything else you might want to see please tell me.

UPDATE: I looked at apt policy for just tcl and tk and here is the result:

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john@debian:~$ apt policy tcl
tcl:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 8.6.9+1
  Version table:
     8.6.9+1 500
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages
john@debian:~$ apt policy tk
tk:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 8.6.9+1
  Version table:
     8.6.9+1 500
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages

So, again I don't know why they don't get updated when I do an update and upgrade in Buster. One would think that they would.
Just looked at /etc/apt/preferences.d and lo and behold grisbi is pinned, priority 999. So that probably accounts for why it is not being upgraded. However, tcl and tk are NOT pinned unless there is some place other the preferences.d to look.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

The Tcl package isn't being updated because you only have the versioned package. Both that and grisbi should remain at the same versions provided you leave the pinning in place but they might not work after the upgrade if there have been any major ABI/API changes in the shared libraries.

[ticojohn]

The Tcl package isn't being updated because you only have the versioned package. Both that and grisbi should remain at the same versions provided you leave the pinning in place but they might not work after the upgrade if there have been any major ABI/API changes in the shared libraries.

Thanks for that feedback HOAS. Here's to hope! I have looked at all the dependencies to both Grisbi and Tcl/Tk. They look like they will be satisfied in Bullseye. But like you said if there are any changes in the shared libraries there may be issues. So maybe I will start by upgrading my HDD as I use it mainly as a backup system.

One other thing to consider, and it has nothing to do with grisbi or tcl, is that I saw where there are three package that will be kept back. They are python2 packages. Not sure how to deal with that but I'll investigate. If I have problems with the upgrade I will come back and ask more questions. In fact I may come back just to tell ya'll how it went.

Thanks much for your help amigo.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

there are three package that will be kept back. They are python2 packages

Python2 is now EOL: https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/ ... 00080.html

[sunrat]

there are three package that will be kept back. They are python2 packages

Python2 is now EOL: https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/ ... 00080.html

It is still in the repos though, even in sid.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Yes but it's dead upstream so there won't be any more bug fixes. The OP should switch to Python3 alternatives if at all possible.

[ticojohn]

Yes but it's dead upstream so there won't be any more bug fixes. The OP should switch to Python3 alternatives if at all possible.

Interesting. I don't use Python, directly, but it may be used by some programs that I use, such as Kodi. So I am in a quandary as to what to do about Python2 being kept back.

Just did apt-cache rdepends python and there are a lot of packages that depend on python. Yikes. What to do?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Kodi in bullseye now uses Python3.

Why don't you post some actual command output instead of vague descriptions? It's less effort for you and less confusing for us.

The actual, verbatim message from APT about the held packages would be a start.