How to move to Debian Unstable?

[sublimepua]

I am coming to LMDE from a year or so of gentoo. My poor laptop can't handle the breakages or power drain of compiling anymore. That said, I don't like the idea of out of date software. Is moving from testing to unstable as simple as changing one word in /etc/apt/sources.list? Is there a process that you would recommend to best handle the change?

[wayne128]

I am coming to LMDE from a year or so of gentoo. My poor laptop can't handle the breakages or power drain of compiling anymore. That said, I don't like the idea of out of date software. Is moving from testing to unstable as simple as changing one word in /etc/apt/sources.list?

If you want Debian based distros to track Sid or unstable, just few steps
1. change /etc/apt/sources.list from testing to unstable ( for all lines)
2. install apt-listbugs for protection!! reduce your risk by a lot
3. apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
and hope nothing break
4. in doubt HOLD the upgrade, post the terminal output on the thread below, someone more skillful may come and help.

Here is one thread that had people running LMDE with sid
viewtopic.php?f=141&t=70230#p406204

Is there a process that you would recommend to best handle the change?

this is covered on the two posts in this link, craigevil posted somewhere that his Debian Sid kde was running for 5 years without a reinstall.
viewtopic.php?f=141&t=73956&p=436696#p436696

I follow the method outlines above for several partitions /computers running Debian Sid and aptosid. So far so good.
In Summary, Sid is much more 'stable' than what I read on many posts.
One breakage since Feb on aptosid , all because I did not read it wants to remove lots of stuff and went ahead, anyway a good lesson, and the solution is covered in craigevil's item 2 and 5. I have been sensitive to what Sid want to remove. In doubt just hold and ask in forums ( aptosid, Debian, LMDE breakage)

good luck, have fun with Sid.

[viking777]

Is moving from testing to unstable as simple as changing one word in /etc/apt/sources.list?

Yes

Is there a process that you would recommend to best handle the change?

Make a disk image before you start.

[sublimepua]

I'm getting errors:

W: GPG error: http://deb.opera.com stable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY A2019EA84E7532C8
W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/dists/unstab ... 6/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.31.0.36 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/dists/unstab ... 6/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.31.0.36 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/dists/unstab ... 6/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.31.0.36 80]

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

my /etc/apt/sources.list is:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ unstable/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org unstable main non-free

Do I omit the security.debian.org source?

[wayne128]

I read somewhere ( I think Debian Sid FAQ but cannot recall ) delete comment

Edit : Debian Sid FAQ
http://wooledge.org/~greg/sidfaq.html#15

my sources.list for Debian Sid-Gnome is simple as below, I set experimental for iceweasel 6 and comment out after installed.

#Debian
# Unstable
deb http://ftp.jp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free


deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main


#experimental for iceweasel
#http://mozilla.debian.net/
#deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ experimental iceweasel-6.0

[ThistleWeb]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wanting a system that doesn't break much, or badly doesn't sound like Sid. Sid is about the latest and greatest, with the latest features before they've been tested and verified to be stable enough to go into Testing. I've never ran a Sid system for the same reason I've never ran a Fedora system; I like a reasonable guarantee of reliability.

[viking777]

I'm getting errors:

W: GPG error: http://deb.opera.com stable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY A2019EA84E7532C8
W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/dists/unstab ... 6/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.31.0.36 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/dists/unstab ... 6/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.31.0.36 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://security.debian.org/dists/unstab ... 6/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 128.31.0.36 80]

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

my /etc/apt/sources.list is:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ unstable/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org unstable main non-free

Do I omit the security.debian.org source?

Try this:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv-keys A2019EA84E7532C8

[zerozero]

hi,
your sources.list in a sid system should like this

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org sid main non-free

[secipolla]

1) KEEP your 'testing' lines in sources.list and ADD the 'unstable' lines. You'll need the 'testing' repo enabled in case you want to downgrade a broken package.
2) You need to install the keyring for the Opera repo. See: http://deb.opera.com/

[nadir]

Does sid have security updates?

Not in the same sense that stable does. If the maintainer of a package fixes a security bug and uploads the package, it'll go into sid by the normal means. If the maintainer doesn't do that, then it won't. The security team only covers stable (and possibly testing... there's a pending issue for that case).

Sid users (hell, all Debian users!) are strongly urged to subscribe to the Debian security announce mailing list. And while you're at it, you should also be on the Debian devel announce list.

from here: http://wooledge.org/~greg/sidfaq.html#15
No need to get excited due to all the other things written there. Sid is quite stable.

The difference between testing and unstable:

3.1.5 Could you tell me whether to install testing or unstable?

This is a rather subjective issue. There is no perfect answer but only a "wise guess" could be made while deciding between unstable and testing. My personal order of preference is Stable, Unstable and Testing. The issue is like this:

Stable is rock solid. It does not break.

Testing breaks less often than Unstable. But when it breaks, it takes a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it could be months at times.

Unstable changes a lot, and it can break at any point. However, fixes get rectified in many occasions in a couple of days and it always has the latest releases of software packaged for Debian.

But there are times when tracking testing would be beneficial as opposed to unstable. The author such situation due to the gcc transition from gcc3 to gcc4. He was trying to install the labplot package on a machine tracking unstable and it could not be installed in unstable as some of its dependencies have undergone gcc4 transition and some have not. But the package in testing was installable on a testing machine as the gcc4 transitioned packages had not "trickled down" to testing.

from here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debia ... tml#s3.1.5
So: no, one can't say that testing is more stable than unstable in general.

There is still the option to run a mixed testing unstable system:
instead of replacing the testing source, just add the line[s] for sid
put the following in /etc/apt/apt.conf (perhaps does not exist yet):

Code: Select all

APT::Default-Release "testing";

apt-get update and install packages from sid with:

Code: Select all

apt-get install -t sid iceweasel

from here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=15612
That is, btw, what a lot of (experienced) Debian users do (instead of running pure Sid). As far i can tell, sure.

Make sure to have a working backup of the OS.

Anyway, most info of that kind, how do the different branches relate to each other, you will find here:
http://www.debian.org/doc/
or do `apt-get install debian-reference-en`, so you got one of them at hand.

PS: i am not sure if the ten days it takes a working package to find its way into testing make that much of a difference (from the pov of being too out of date).