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Howto: Set up and Maintain a Mixed Testing/Unstable System

Share your HowTo, Documentation, Tips and Tricks. Not for support questions!.
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reidar
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#31 Post by reidar »

I am trying this again, after having gone back to etch again :-)

I now started with etch, upgraded to lenny, and then wanted to start doing as explained in this article. But on my system /etc/apt/apt.conf is a directory rather than a file. Is there a misprint, or should I create an apt.conf file in the /etc/apt/apt.conf/ directory?

-r

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rickh
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#32 Post by rickh »

/etc/apt/apt.conf should not be a directory. Assuming that directory is empty, I would remove it and create the file.
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reidar
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#33 Post by reidar »

Hmmm, strange thing is, it is not empty.

Code: Select all

mosvold-laptop:~# ls /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
00trustcdrom  01autoremove  10periodic  70debconf
-r

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rickh
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#34 Post by rickh »

apt.conf.d is a directory. You don't have to be concerned with that. The "file" you are interested in is apt.conf
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#35 Post by reidar »

Aaah, I actually didn't see the ".d" until now...
How dyslectic can a man be...

Thanks, and sorry for bothering you with such stupidities :-)

-r

Eck
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#36 Post by Eck »

Hey again,

rickh, does what I did here:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=101428#101428

with /etc/apt/preferences seem to be correct to handle the situation with my 3rd party repo's?

And, what about that security repo? Is what I did in there okay for having that repo do its stuff (being preferred when it pushes something to Lenny)?

As I said in the post, I had tried the apt.conf way and aptitude was showing the Lenny versions instead of my 3rd party versions. Probably because putting in a default distro designation for it in an apt.conf makes it pin to 990 and being an official distro overrides any 3rd party repos.

Same thing happened with apt/preferences (with no apt.conf) until I lowered Lenny to Pin 500. Then things appeared to get sorted in the correct manner.

Just not sure, and concerned about the security repo. But as far as I know it looks okay.

What do you think?
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rickh
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#37 Post by rickh »

I have read and studied a bit about pinning, but I don't use it myself. I choose to not install applications that can't be handled by apt.conf alone. Therefore I don't feel qualified to render an opinion on your fairly intricate setup.

What I would do is use apt-cache policy <package-name>. It gives the pin value and possible source for any package you are interested in. If I were experimenting, that's how I'd do it.

If you're using Sid, the security repo is not an issue, since any security upgrade will be posted to Sid immediately anyway.
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#38 Post by Eck »

No, still on Lenny. That's why I put Sid all the way down to a pin of 80. The only things I installed from Sid were the linux-image-2.6-k7 and the linux-headers-2.6-k7. Those pulled in the appropriate 2.6.22-k7 Kernel and Headers.

Aptitude still pulls its upgrades from Lenny after setting that up and things appear okay, but I'm mostly concerned with that testing security repo.

You know, I think putting the default-release in apt.conf is equivalent to putting the apt-pin at 990 in apt/preferences. It appeared to have the same effect. I needed to lower testing to 500 and put unstable at 80 to get the results I wanted from the Shame Compiz Fusion, WineHQ, and, debian multimedia. Those, as you see, are way up in the 990's so they hopefully take precedence. That's not possible with apt.conf, or at least it didn't work out correctly when I tried it. Aptitude would pull everything from testing, disregarding the 3rd party repo's. That wouldn't be right, so that's why I did what you saw.

Thanks again. I just wish I could be certain the security repo is going to do what it's supposed to the way I have it in there.
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rickh
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#39 Post by rickh »

I just wish I could be certain the security repo is going to do what it's supposed to the way I have it in there.
Here is a good link to keep track of security issues in Unstable and Testing.

http://security-tracker.debian.net/trac ... se/testing
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#40 Post by Eck »

Thanks. Maybe I can check what I'm getting against that list and see if I get the new fixes from the testing security repo when they're mentioned there. At least at first to see if what I've got is working.

The whole point of having the repo there is so I don't need to go check things on my own, but perhaps I'll be able to see if I have it setup right this way.
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cb474
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#41 Post by cb474 »

Thanks for the great Howto. I'm migrating from Ubuntu to Debian and I'd say I'm an intermediate/newbie. I followed the Howto for the mixed system because I wanted to install VLC.

Several questions now though:

1) Is the -t option necessary if installing a package that only exists in unstable (such as VLC)?

2) The "apt-show-versions | grep unstable" command doesn't work for me. I get: "bash: apt-show-versions: command not found".

3) All of a sudden after I followed the Howto and did "aptitude update," and then installed VLC, the software update icon popped up in the panel and said there are 18 new updates. It said I need to update things like deluge, mplayer, and mozilla-mplayer (which I assume aren't related to dependencies installed with VLC)? It also wants to update libamrnb3, libamrwb3, libartsc0, libasyncns0, libboost-date-time1.34.1, libboost-filesystem1.34.1, libboost-thread1.34.1, libfaac0, libggi2, libgii1, libgii1-target-x, libopenal0a, libpulse0, libx264-56, libxvidcore4.

Is this just a coincidence? How do I tell which repos Software Updates is getting the packages from?

It does occur to me that I didn't have the debian-multimedia.org repos in my sources.list until I followed this Howto, could that be where the updates are coming from?

4) Is not doing the pinning still considered a fairly safe way to go? I guess I don't want to have to meticulously have to keep track of every dependency and upgrade.

5) I kind of like the idea of the mixed system and learning about it, but was all this really necessary just to use VLC?

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#42 Post by rickh »

1) If it only exists in Unstable, it will install without the -t.

2) aptitude install apt-show-versions

3) It's very likely that those updates are coming from "multimedia" ... and, get rid of that stupid "updater" application. If you're sophisticated enough to run a mixed system, you don't need to be reminded to update regularly.

4) That's how I still do it.

5) I suppose it's not really necessary, but it's the best way.
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cb474
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#43 Post by cb474 »

Thanks for the answers!

What's wrong with the automatic Software Updates program? Like I said I'm an intermediate/novice at this, so I have a part of me that's fine with the command line and likes it and another part of me that's lazy and likes graphical user interfaces. And I guess I do like that the Software Updates program automatically tells me when updates are available.

On the other hand, I'm now a bit confused about updating. I presume that the proper command line way to update is "aptitude upgrade" or "apt-get -u upgrade"? When I run either of those command right now (after doing "aptitude update") they both tell me there are the same six packages to upgrade: libmozjs0d libnspr4-0d libxul-common libxul0d mozilla-mplayer xulrunner-gnome-support.

But Software Updates has 27 packages it wants to upgrade (those I listed in my post above, plus these here and a couple more). Also Software Updates wants to upgrade mplayer, deluge, and a couple other things that aptitude wants to hold back.

Any thoughts on what's going on here? Is this because Software Updates doesn't work properly with the mixed system? Is the proper thing to do to upgrade with aptitude and to ignore Software Updates' many recommendations?

cb474
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#44 Post by cb474 »

Okay, I mostly answered my own question. It seems like the Software Updates program does a dist-upgrade, not just a plane upgrade. So when I run "aptitude dist-upgrade" it shows all the same packages to be installed or upgraded. Although aptitude did come up with one more package than Software Updates did.

I'm still wondering, however, what's so bad about the Software Updates program?

Eck
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#45 Post by Eck »

I don't share the anti-gui sentiment many have. I figure that if both a command-line and a GUI do EXACTLY the same, or if the GUI is even better, than I'd give preference to the GUI.

But in this case, the command-line is better, or at least aptitude even with its gui. Not because it's a gui vs. command-line, but because the software updater and synaptic are front-ends to apt, but aptitude, although another front-end yeah, offers a user a different way that if used should be used alone. That means if you want to use aptitude, that's all you should use. It needs to be kept aware of everything that gets installed to make use of its advanced removing automatically installed packages. The only way it is aware of these is if it installed them. So when you remove something, things auto-installed by dependency or recommends are also removed if nothing else uses them. I'm glad it's there to keep track of these sort of things rather than my needing to do that!

I have no problem with the software updater however. I just never used it to actually install anything, but rather to let me know there are upgrades available. As soon as it popped that up, I would open a terminal and do:


su -
(root password)
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
Go through that
aptitude full-upgrade (which is the dist-upgrade formally)

Yeah, I'd dist-upgrade daily on Lenny. On Sid, if I were to run that, I would uninstall or deactivate software updater since I would only want to do safe-upgrades frequently and full (dist)-upgrades perhaps weekly once I saw that they would have everything they needed to work properly put into Sid. Sometimes apps get put into Sid in pieces and will break stuff if all the newer pieces aren't in there yet.

See, not wanting to actually do the full or dist-upgrade as soon as they are available, which would be the case for me in Sid if I used it, makes the software-updater a pain in the neck since it would always be flashing and beeping at me!

But in a case where one is on Lenny and wants the easy reminder I found the software updater to be handy. But I would NOT use it to install things as it would not use aptitude to do so, but simply use its front end to apt-get commands. Not good enough for me. I only want aptitude to install or remove things in Debian.

Lots of differing opinions on this stuff, but that's how I've felt about it.

Whatever, don't bother with Adept on Debian if you use KDE. It's buggy. I think they fixed most of the bugs on Ubuntu, so there it's okay (also because one shouldn't use aptitude at all these days on such a customized distro like Ubuntu).

Aptitude for Debian. Apt-get for any other Debian based derivative distro. And so Synaptic and the software update and also Adept (as long as it's been fixed) are fine for the other distros since they just are nice front-ends for apt that do precisely the same things.

There is no GUI (except for Aptitude's own) that does exactly what Aptitude does.
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cb474
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#46 Post by cb474 »

Thanks for the lengthy explanation. I've being using "aptitude dist-upgrade", but you're saying "full-upgrade" is the same thing? Is there any difference between the two?

Also, just so I'm clear, is there a problem if I've started using aptitude and then I use apt for something? Not that I would, given your explanation, but I think I already have done this a little and I'm just wondering if it's going to mess aptitude up in some way.

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#47 Post by Eck »

No, it shouldn't mess it up but if removing one of those programs later then it'll just remove the program itself and unused dependencies. You might want to check the aptitude show for those packages you used apt-get for and see if the recommends, if any, listed there are installed on your system as apt-get (at least before the very latest apt-get) did not install those. But in general for the future if you're going to want to take advantage of aptitude then you should use it alone.

There is no difference between dist-upgrade and full-upgrade. It's just that the newer versions of aptitude now use safe-upgrade instead of upgrade and full-upgrade instead of dist-upgrade. To take into account users who haven't caught on to this yet, they have aptitude answer to either term appropriately.

I've read that apt has been updated to also install recommends automatically by default. Not sure whether that has reached Lenny yet. Still, it does not keep track of automatically installed packages so it can remove those when you uninstall the main package like aptitude does.

When I install something I usually check out the package I want with aptitude show so I can write down any suggested packages it lists. I may or may not want those so it gives me a chance to look those up for myself and make a decision about them. I nearly always want the recommended packages so I've been happy that aptitude has always taken care of those automatically for me.

Sometimes some of the recommended packages in the lists are old versions of things that have replacements and so aptitude will either say it is not installing them because in Debian something like that would be a conflict if the package was prepared correctly, and these types of things are handled automatically quite nicely, OR it will be confused because the packages have a boo boo and do not list conflicts. In that case, nicely too, aptitude will start its attempts to resolve the dependencies and you can see printed out just what packages are causing the problems. You can then quit out of the install and aptitude show the various packages and in general it will be obvious to you as to which packages to keep and which look older and so can be replaced. Sometimes just installing the newer one and removing the older one will then let you go ahead and aptitude install the original package you wanted and this time aptitude will not have a problem with it.

So, some things are automatic and some aren't, but it's pretty easy to stop what's going on if it doesn't quite look right and fix things up by taking a look at the packages aptitude was listing.

The GUI tools usually do not give as much info, and when they go ahead and automatically try to install things and they wind up partially installed with some obscure errors listed, you will curse yourself for not using the less pretty but more descriptive and user interactive aptitude.

Basically, just getting used to playing with aptitude from the command line will enable you to stop problem installs before proceeding, give you an understanding of how to make things right, and keep your system stable and without half installed, broken packages lying about.

The only thing similar I've seen is OpenSUSE's YaST Software Management from the qt interface (not the new GTK interface which offers less information and so more potential to get a damaged system). Folks sometimes don't like it because it is slow, however I have found it to have similar capabilities in resolving potential hiccups as does Debian's aptitude. And all that from a pretty GUI too!

It has nice stuff, sort of like aptitude on steroids. For example, I can use an older version of something if it has had an Online Update fix for it whereas a newer version hasn't. I can choose an older version from a 3rd party repo that includes extra multimedia codecs I desire whereas the newer version does not. So I can selectively upgrade package for package. Kinda neat! No other GUI package manager can do the things YaST can.

Smart can wreck a system doing upgrades automatically, whereas YaST can be fully user controlled and have problem packages skipped, staying with the versions the rest of the system doesn't conflict with, and the remainder upgraded. When the rest of the system gets the upgrades needed to make the problem packages work, then there will no longer be a YaST resolver complaint and the user can proceed to upgrade those as well.

Unfortunately, it really takes a user to explore into both Aptitude and YaST to discover neat system saving devices such as these. They are not things that can be listed step by step in guides. It is part of the learning process in Linux. So, the best advice for a new user is to stick with what is known to be stable. In Debian that is Etch, in SUSE that is 10.3 without adding zillions of repositories (like me, but I like new stuff and know my way around to keep things stable, I hope). The less upgrading, the less chance of messing up a good thing.

As long as this stuff looks confusing, that means it is something one shouldn't be doing if they want to keep their systems running smoothly. Once this technical jargon looks like it makes sense, then more risks taken will be successful because one will understand how to deal with situations that come up. An experienced user will be able to deal with strange things that come up in a few minutes. He understands the tools to use and how to go about using them. A new user is probably better off avoiding the latest untried software versions until such time as fixing things will only take a few minutes. Any longer and then one isn't using their computers, the computer is taking up time with busy work instead of getting real work (or play) done.

That's why, since we're talking Debian here, I would say that a new Linux user would probably be happier with their Debian experience by running the officially released Etch, at least at first while they are learning about the various tools and software. Very little upgrades to be concerned about. Those that are available are important for security or fix important bugs. One can watch the tools in action and learn their way around.

Yeah, Lenny is better once one is at home in Debian because new software versions and new software to Linux bring some nice new features along with them. Usually all this appears in Lenny within weeks after being released upstream, after a period of trial while in Sid. So we keep up with the Jones's better. But it's testing, so occasionally hiccups will occur. Better to be a bit experienced in dealing with hiccups before barging in.

But wait. Other distro's get these new versions quicker so doesn't that make them better? The answer is no, because their users get all the bugs that haven't been fixed yet, need to research work arounds to use until updates and fixes are figured out and released by the distro, and sometimes these things aren't fixed until 6 months go by and a new distro version comes out. In Debian, with it's rolling releases, as soon as a fix works we get it. No more work around needed and Lenny grows towards its ultimate goal of being the next official Debian stable release. Fun to watch it grow! But frustrating if things break on the way, especially to someone who needs to take all day to fix things only because they don't understand the Debian tools available yet.

Okay, I'll shut up now. Did I mention I tend to ramble? Sorry, but I hope some of that helps!
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#48 Post by rickh »

Hmmm! Interesting. It appears that this post made the Debian News; but the link goes off to somebody's blog rather than here. I tried but couldn't find the blog they're linking to.
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#49 Post by Telemachus »

rickh wrote:Hmmm! Interesting. It appears that this post made the Debian News; but the link goes off to somebody's blog rather than here. I tried but couldn't find the blog they're linking to.
Yup, that's ****** annoying. First, you are told that you need to log into WordPress. I have a WP account, so I logged in. However, the blog that the page refers to doesn't seem to exist. (I tried the exact address of the link as well as a few shorter versions, trying to find the top-level directory. No luck.) If I were you, I would email the person who posted the link on Debian news (cj2003@debian-news.net) and ask him to fix the link. He seems to be the "webmaster" for Debian news, so it shouldn't be much trouble. The link should point here (which anyone can read without a registration) rather than to a password-protected, non-existent blog.

cb474
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#50 Post by cb474 »

I find that with this mixed system setup sometimes aptitude wants to do kooky things. For example, currently I only have deluge and vlc installed from unstable. But today on a full-upgrade, aptitude wanted to install a version of evolution-webcal that conflicted with the current version of evolution, so it's solution was to remove evolution and as one possible other solution aptitude even suggested removing gnome-desktop-environment.

What gives? It's like because some package has been put in testing that doesn't work with other existing packages, aptitude just wants to totally break everything related to that package. Why doesn't aptitude suggest upgrading evolution to unstable, which would at least not just break and remove all kinds of packages that you're using? In the end, it seems like manually upgrading to the unstable version of the central package in question is the solution that makes "aptitude full-upgrade" happy, but aptitude never suggets that itself.

Or I've also seen aptitude suggest upgrading a package to unstable as a solution, but then when I hit "Y" accept this solution, it doesn't do it. It just skips over the package.

I just find it confusing. And why would a version of evolution-webcal show up in testing, anyway, that is dependent on packages in unstable? Am I missing something about how all this works?

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