MintUpdate-Debian - is it now safe to use?

[hsngrms]

I don't change backlight/brightness on my Samsung RV520-S03TR laptop, otherwise works like a charm

[/dev/urandom]

So are there plans to add debdelta to MU?

[Dar-es-Salaam]

Hi All,

I use mintupgrade debian on occasion only now as I switiched to aptitude to do all my upgrades and like it that way. I had a look at MU but couldn't work it out as a relative newbie so gave the idea up. I have used all the repro's so far and had no trouble with any of them but at present am using incomming

[appye]

Hmm. I am seeing a lot of posts with people saying they don't use it because they prefer apt-get or aptitude, killing X first, etc... I get that. X can crash sometimes when upgrading it (I have yet to experience this). More things can go wrong. I am command line junkie myself. I love automating and scripting things.

Mint is supposed to be geared for non-savvy end users though, right? My 400 year old grandmother for example. She prefers the GUI over the command line and will NOT update her computer by any other method. She told me herself, she tried command line updates on her 300th birthday and it didn't go so well. She didn't know what she was doing, and really she just wanted to get on the computer to look up some details on steam-powered crochet machines. It is a fact of life. Non-savvy users WILL NOT USE THE CONSOLE.

The topic is whether or not mintupdate-debian is safe to use. I believe it is for the most part. I do believe some things could be done to make it safer ...

Perhaps packages can be flagged (xorg-server linux-image, etc) and it can pop up a warning and dump back to a console first. Perhaps it should try and always run the actual background apt-get task in a screen session? DOES it run apt-get in the background, or is it doing things internally?

Also, I think it should OFFER REBOOTS when updates are complete. My main pet peeve with this program is that it just disappears when things are finished. No "updates are finished" prompt or anything at all. To illustrate why this is bad, imagine a kernel is updated on a laptop and that hibernates afterwards, maybe because the user walked away and it was running on battery, whatever, maybe there was an urgent phone call about how the the user's favorite rodeo clown got hit by a steamroller just down the street and it just HAS to be seen! When the user returns and boots up the laptop, grub will boot into the new kernel, and ignore any resume that needs to be done because that pertains to the old kernel.

Kudos for making the dist-upgrade option a preference option instead of prompting the user every time though. This is definitely better than the update manager in vanilla debian.

[aljoriz]

Fantastic the MintUpdate now has the ability to select download servers!

This makes updating slightly easier, Thank you very much CLEM!

[theremper]

It works great for me, I would suggest to everyone, so easy to use

[abtygwyn]

If you're like me and don't really have a clue about what's going on and how LMDE works, but you like it all the same, then it's fine. Having just managed to understand how to install it, it's in situ and it works and I can't ask for more than that.

Andrew

[mrjoeyman]

My 400 year old grandmother for example. She prefers the GUI over the command line and will NOT update her computer by any other method. She told me herself, she tried command line updates on her 300th birthday and it didn't go so well. She didn't know what she was doing, and really she just wanted to get on the computer to look up some details on steam-powered crochet machines.

Okay thats got to be my favorite post in my not too long Mint Forum history!

My grandmother is only 131 yrs old but still the other day she complained about the cli because when she entered the command:

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$ aptitude show "?name(^libgtkDentucream2.0-0)" | grep -e

she got:

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LIB/Udev/ntp-probe/dentucream ' ' mtp no such file or directory.



Sorry Grandma!

[msbln]

MintUpdate 4.3.3 tells me there is no update available which is fine enough, but actually I'm waiting for the update for MintUpdate itself, because I'm still missing the button "Update Pack". Maybe something is wrong with my repositories:

### Upstream ###

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import

# deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport romeo
# deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport romeo


### testing main ###

# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free #old

deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free


### Security ###

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free #old

# deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free


### Multimedia ###

# deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free #old
# deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free



I'm a little confused. Any help is much appreciated.

[gavinhc]

MintUpdate 4.3.3 tells me there is no update available which is fine enough, but actually I'm waiting for the update for MintUpdate itself, because I'm still missing the button "Update Pack".

Your problem is that you are still using the original MintUpdate that was originally shipped with LMDE before the introduction of the update packs. You need to go into Synaptic and replace it with MintUpdate-Debian, which is currently at version 1.0.4.

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gavin@lmde ~ $ apt-cache policy mintupdate
mintupdate:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 4.3.3
  Version table:
     4.3.3 0
        700 http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint-packages/ debian/main amd64 Packages
gavin@lmde ~ $ apt-cache policy mintupdate-debian
mintupdate-debian:
  Installed: 1.0.4
  Candidate: 1.0.4
  Version table:
 *** 1.0.4 0
        700 http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint-packages/ debian/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[msbln]

Your problem is that you are still using the original MintUpdate that was originally shipped with LMDE before the introduction of the update packs. You need to go into Synaptic and replace it with MintUpdate-Debian, which is currently at version 1.0.4.

That was quick and easy. It's working now Thanks.

However, when clicking on the Update-Pack-Info, it says no Update Pack is installed. At the same time it still says the system is up to date. Maybe the system doesn't need any of the three Update Packs, or is a repository missing? These are my present ones:

### Upstream ###
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import

### testing main ###
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free

### Security ###
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free

### Multimedia ###
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free

[zerozero]

msbin: you might want to tidy up a bit your sources.list (specially security and multimedia -if you want to use it at all); see here viewtopic.php?f=185&t=82346&start=0&hilit=update

EDIT: we posted almost at the same time, and i missed your post, now your repos are correct, but you had debian testing on it (although commented out): for how long you were updating directly from testing?

[msbln]

A few hours ago I did a

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sudo get-apt dist-upgrade

with my old repo-list active. That is:

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deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free


Result is only two held packages

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foomatic-db-engine mint-flashplugin

So far everything seems fine. But there is no option for me to apply any UpdatePack.
Is that because of today's dist-upgrade?

[zerozero]

this last dist-upgrade wasn't the issue.
i was talking about this

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# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free #old

was in your repo, when was the last time you did a DU with this repo enabled?

[msbln]

After some serious update problems in the beginning of October I had to fall back to an image from 02.09.2011. Then I changed the repos before updating again. So the answer is: 02.09.2011, right?

[zerozero]

ahh, i see, so don't worry about it
basically you did a DU after the end of august with that repo enabled (and end of august was when the UP3 was frozen to release), so all the updates you should have got in the UP, you already had them in your system.

MintUpdate-debian will show you again the info when UP4 comes down the pipe.

[msbln]

Cool, thanks a lot

Btw, when using the command line for updating,
Ubuntu-wiki recommends using

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade rather than
sudo apt-get upgrade

but is that still a good idea with a rolling distribution (or let's say 'semi-rolling' distro) ?

[zerozero]

that is the best way to keep your system updated and in shape

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

in a rolling release, you should update all the system, allow new libs to install and eventually older ones to get removed, and only the dist-upgrade can do that.

[msbln]

Great, that was important info. Thanks.

[michaelp]

I use it, love it, and have had no trouble.