[plug] Two questions about Debian system and upgrading

[Shannon Carver]

Hi Bret,

Okey, firstly, if you're referencing "Stable" repositories in your
/etc/apt/sources.list, I'm pretty sure that's the only thing you have to
change to switch between stable/unstable/testing.  The message you see
at login prompt will merely be the message stored in /etc/profile, or
/etc/motd, or /etc/welcome (I can't remember for the life of me where
it's kept).  It may even be in /etc/defaults/version or something like
that, a google should provide an answer.

Doing a synaptic update should do everything apart from the latest
kernel module, you'll have a -kernel or similar in your
/etc/apt/apt.conf which tells it to ignore kernel updates.  I'm not sure
how good you are with kernel building, but I'd either be getting the
kernel sources from kernel.org and building it yourself, or remove the
-kernel directive from apt sources and attempt to update to the latest
debian kernel.  I remember installing sarge with an early 2.6.x kernel,
so you should be able to upgrade straight to that tree, the benefits are
usually noticeable.

Regards

Shannon

Bret Busby wrote:
>
> I am running Debian Linux on my desktop computer, as a workstation.
>
> At the login prompt, it says
> "Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable".
>
> In the /etc/apt/sources.list file, is
> "
> deb http://ftp.uwa.edu.au/mirrors/linux/debian/ stable main contrib
> non-free
> deb http://ftp.wa.au.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
>
> deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
> ".
>
> ls -l shows that the file is as it is, since 2007-01-01.
>
> Updates have been performed, using Synaptic.
>
> The first question is, how do I convert the system to Debian stable
> (sarge)? As the sources are from stable, the installed packages should
> now be mostly packages that would be in the stable version.
>
> The second issue relates to the kernel. The kernel version appears to
> be 2.4.18-bf2.4 .The CPU is a Duron 1100, for which I believe that the
> installed kernel is not the latest version.
>
> Is it possible to update the kernel, without having to build a kernel
> package? If so, how? I cannot find how to update the kernel, without
> having to build a kernel package, in any of the documentation. When I
> previously used Red Hat 7.2 (which was from before Red Hat went like
> Microsoft), the update facility would update the kernel (although,
> each time, I would have to manually update the file that pointed to
> the kernel), but Synaptic won't do it.
>
> Thanks in anticipation.
>
> -- 
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> ..............
>
> "So once you do know what the question actually is,
>  you'll know what the answer means."
> - Deep Thought,
>   Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
>   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
>   A Trilogy In Four Parts",
>   written by Douglas Adams,
>   published by Pan Books, 1992
>
> ....................................................
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