ATTN: Debian geeks

[annathepiper]

Okay, so I just recently discovered that Debian's put out a new stable release, 3.1, and I want to go and upgrade all of murkworks.net's servers to be running this. Just to make sure I'm not missing anything, a question for the Debian geeks out there:

Is there any reason why I can't do this just via an apt-get command? Can I do this via apt-get update/apt-get upgrade, or should I do apt-get update/apt-get dist-upgrade instead? Also, since I have several versions of this, that, and the other package off backports.org, are there special accommodations I should make for that?

Any and all tips appreciated! I'd like to do this this coming weekend, so I'd like to get all my clues in a row before then. Thanks in advance!

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

if you're running exim, beware that the new stuff uses exim 4, which is not quite compatible with exim 3. the dark one got bit by this, & it's what's holding me up in turn.

[annathepiper]

solarbird says we only have exim on door, and we don't use door for mail, so we should be okay in that regard. We're using sendmail for all our mail needs on newmoon. Thanks for the heads up, though!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Sendmail? ewwwww :)

Depending on what you're doing, it may be worth it to go to Postfix.... particularly if it's just simple mail delivery inbound and smart-host outbound....

apt-get install postfix and five questions later, it's running. Of course, you'd have to set up anti-spam, but that's not hard either... I've a couple recipes that keeps my spam load to a bare minimum (I actually had three slip through yesterday, first time I'd gotten three in quite a while....)

[annathepiper]

I defer to solarbird in this area, as she handles mail foo and I handle web foo. But I'll tell her about your recommendation. :) (We're running spamassassin on the Murknet for our spam needs.)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Spamassassin links into Postfix reasonably well; I don't know if 2.2 has it where you can link it into main.cf yet o rnot, but you can always do it with Procmail....

Too bad there's no time before this weekend we could get together and have a big geek brainstorm session....

[annathepiper]

Well, I don't want to get too wacky with going off script from what I've got installed on the Murknet right now--my only goal for the weekend is to just upgrade what we've got to the 3.1 distribution. (And to get Nethack 3.4.3 installed finally! ;) )

Doing a major shift of big components of the system, such as mail, is a whole other kettle of fish. Certainly worth a geek session at some point, though!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I would read the release notes carefully and look out for the above exim problem, but, yes, you should be able to do "vi /etc/apt/sources.list && apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade".... it's rather designed for that.

Take out your backports.org listings; you'll get the frontports when you upgrade.

Let me know if you get stuck. I might even be available for onsite support, for suitable bribes... :)

[annathepiper]

Okay--so to sum up, take out references to backports.org in our sources.list file, then apt-get update, then apt-get dist upgrade, yes? Got it.

Another big Debian geek friend of ours strongly supports our moving to 3.1, and says if I babysit while doing a dist-upgrade we should be fine. Whoot!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to swap your sources.list "main" lines to "stable" or "sarge".... but yes.

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks for calling that out.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

BTW, who's the other big Debian geek? Anybody on here?

[annathepiper]

fenton, also on my Friends list, though I think he mostly lurks. (HI fenton!)