I am fairly sure that if your box is already broken then "apt-get upgrade" of any sort is not going to fix it. However, the reverse situation is more likely to cause you problems -- "apt-get upgrade" appears to break *working* boxes when using the Debian unstable sources.

It sure would be nice to know what the limits of "apt-get upgrade" are to see if working boxes can safely upgrade from the Debian stable archive. However, short of breaking my 2 working machines, this is probably going to just remain an academic curiousity until I get a "scratch" machine I am willing to risk breaking.

As an aside, I have been clearing out my basement of the older PCs using the rule that if it can't practically run KnoppMyth as a frontend then its not worth keeping. All of my older hardware is on its way to the local recycling center such as MBs, cases, or anything using the AT format, processors less than 400MHz, HDs less than 8 GB, practically all ISA cards, etc. I am keeping an ATX case, ATX PSs, a couple of HDs, various PCI & AGP video cards, various PCI cards, cables, & miscellaneous parts. If/when I come across an ATX MB with a processor and memory or one that supports the stuff I do have, I'll probably build an experimental box and look into this "apt-get upgrade" issue some more.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

I do not agree with this statement.

I did the apt-get upgrade and it boots fine and I was able to compile my kernel last night after doing the apt-get upgrade and a reboot(wireless locked the machine, so it was a cold reboot)

I must say that so far I am not as impressed as everyone else is with knoppmyth.

Even linux has security holes, and these boxes are running apache, mysql and a lot of times ssh.
these are popular targets for attacks, and I am not sure that I would trust my linksys firewall/router to be all that I need to keep people from attacking this box.

I am a strong believer in stable branches, but there are security updates in the stable branch of most distros and I imagine that debian is one of them.

I would say that it may not be broken but it also may be a spam relay, warez site, or controled by a bot so maybe you should fix it. I don't think I am going to install tripwire but I wouldn't think that it is a stupid idea either.
Linux gets hacked just like everyone else. I think the laz-a-faire attitue will eventually lead to problems down the road.
thank you for your time and have a good day

Did you use the Debian stable or unstable archive?

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

I have never used debian before. I got whatever the default would have been. I went to the debian forum for help when I saw errors come up with
apt-get install rt2500-base
I was assuming it was the wireless card problem and a debian fix. I found this site after I posted on the debian forum.

The debain advice was to run the upgrade to see if it would fix things.
Problem was that it filled up my root partition(I did the auto install at first)

Me thinks your logs are filling up...

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

yes your right it was the logs and that was how I came up with 400 megs of space to get back to a working compiler.
thanks

Whenever I've tried an apt-get upgrade or install mozilla-firefox, it attempts to install locales which fails and messes everything up

I have not said it in a while so... Perhaps a search of the forum.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!