Upgrading To A Newer Knoppix Release

**tinmith** · 11-01-2003, 09:28 AM

Hi. I have been using the latest Knoppix 3.3 recently and I am very impressed with how it installs a working system with the latest tools that also supports Debian packaging. I tried a standard Debian stable/testing setup and it was a lot of messing around to get something similar to Knoppix working (and the upgrade to testing took a number of runs before it succeeded). So I'd rather keep my life simple and start out with a system that is configured to work from the start.

My question is, when a newer Knoppix release comes out, is there an easy upgrade path without requiring me to nuke my partition and recopy it on again? Is there a way to grab the package list from the next Knoppix release, and feed it into apt-get to make sure my system is in sync with the latest?

I have been playing around with apt-get upgrade but it seems to want to upgrade a pile of stuff because Knoppix is based on testing/unstable which changes quickly over time. I'd rather not blindly upgrade everything because things will break due to their unstable nature.

thanks,
Wayne

**rickenbacherus** · 11-01-2003, 05:48 PM

Originally Posted by tinmith

My question is, when a newer Knoppix release comes out, is there an easy upgrade path without requiring me to nuke my partition and recopy it on again?

I don't see what nuking a partition has to do with anything but the short answer to your question is no. If you want Knoppix installed then you need to install it. Realize however that a new Knoppix release is to include things such as better hardware detection, more drivers, newer better apps, etc. all of which is only an apt-get away from a hard drive installation. There shouldn't really be any need to install the latest release unless you simply cannot get something to work on your own perhaps.

Is there a way to grab the package list from the next Knoppix release, and feed it into apt-get to make sure my system is in sync with the latest?

Well Knoppix uses Debian packages so anything that's in Debian you can have on your system too.

I have been playing around with apt-get upgrade but it seems to want to upgrade a pile of stuff because Knoppix is based on testing/unstable which changes quickly over time. I'd rather not blindly upgrade everything because things will break due to their unstable nature.

thanks,
Wayne

Well that IS what apt-get upgrade is supposed to do- upgrade! If you don't want testing/unstable packages then edit /etc/apt/sources.list

**Dave_Bechtel** · 11-01-2003, 10:11 PM

> There shouldn't really be any need to install the latest release unless you simply cannot get something to work on your own perhaps.

--Hmm, perhaps something like, I don't know... KDE??

**Dave_Bechtel** · 11-01-2003, 10:18 PM

--This thread may help you out:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5560#25532

Originally Posted by tinmith

Hi. I have been using the latest Knoppix 3.3 recently and I am very impressed with how it installs a working system with the latest tools that also supports Debian packaging. I tried a standard Debian stable/testing setup and it was a lot of messing around to get something similar to Knoppix working (and the upgrade to testing took a number of runs before it succeeded). So I'd rather keep my life simple and start out with a system that is configured to work from the start.

My question is, when a newer Knoppix release comes out, is there an easy upgrade path without requiring me to nuke my partition and recopy it on again? Is there a way to grab the package list from the next Knoppix release, and feed it into apt-get to make sure my system is in sync with the latest?

I have been playing around with apt-get upgrade but it seems to want to upgrade a pile of stuff because Knoppix is based on testing/unstable which changes quickly over time. I'd rather not blindly upgrade everything because things will break due to their unstable nature.

thanks,
Wayne

**tinmith** · 11-02-2003, 03:26 AM

Originally Posted by rickenbacherus

Well Knoppix uses Debian packages so anything that's in Debian you can have on your system too.

I have been playing around with apt-get upgrade but it seems to want to upgrade a pile of stuff because Knoppix is based on testing/unstable which changes quickly over time. I'd rather not blindly upgrade everything because things will break due to their unstable nature.

Well that IS what apt-get upgrade is supposed to do- upgrade! If you don't want testing/unstable packages then edit /etc/apt/sources.list

I have used standard Debian before so I know all about using apt-get and so forth. The problem is that if I run an apt-get upgrade, it updates a whole pile of packages because they change every day. Unstable is by its very nature "unstable", so I don't want to just upgrade everything because my box will break. Klaus has done a good job picking which of the unstable and testing packages work and which ones don't - I want to stick with those selections because I don't want to have to worry about making the same choices myself. I've been using Linux for years with my research but I don't have time to spend a week configuring my box a couple times per year, I just want to use it.

If I configure APT to use stable, then I will end up going backwards - and there are problems with C library versions being incompatible and compilers and all that. Testing may also be backwards from where the box is at the moment. I tried getting my Debian stable machine and upgrading packages selectively to testing but it ended up wanting to install hundreds of updates and I might as well have gone to testing, which also broke.

So what I really want is in my APT sources file to put in "knoppix" as my target instead of stable or testing or unstable. So whenever a new Knoppix comes out I just do apt-get upgrade and it will upgrade to whatever packages Klaus has designated for his latest distro.

The problem I have with Debian right now is it has only three targets, and only stable is really designed to be used and it is too old. The thing I liked about Knoppix is that someone has gone to the trouble of selecting the packages that work from the bleeding edge Debian unstable trees and making them work nicely together. I know I can do an apt-get upgrade blindly to the latest unstable but the box will stop working probably.

Is there any way to do what I want? Perhaps this would be a cool feature for new releases? Is there a virtual package or something I can apt-get which syncs me with the latest package selections. I am happy to write scripts or whatever is needed, but I don't know much about how Knoppix works.

thanks,
Wayne

**tinmith** · 11-02-2003, 03:43 AM

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

--This thread may help you out:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5560#25532

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the link ... I had a look at it and it recommends that I grab the packages output from my current versus a new Knoppix CD.

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

Disclaimer - I haven't done this before... but grab the original CD that you used to install from, and compare the packages.txt with the results of ' dpkg -l '.

' dpkg -l >curpkgs.txt '
' diff packages.txt curpkgs.txt '

Ok, so if I just find what packages are new, and then run:

apt-get install PACKAGENAME=VERSION

Then this should install the latest version and bring the system up to date with the latest?

Is there any way to simplify this process? I imagine that if I ran the above there would be dependency conflicts and would have to keep re-running the process repeatedly until everything sorted itself out.

Also, for the Knoppix specific packages, what APT repository stores these? In dpkg -l I can see knoppix-* and knx-* packages but I can't tell where they come from, or are they only distributed with the CD and they are not apt-get'able?

thanks,
Wayne

**Dave_Bechtel** · 11-02-2003, 09:59 PM

--I have been running Knoppix installed to HD with the supplied sources.list (plus a few things from apt-get.org) on two boxes since something like January, and neither has broken. I do apt-get update/upgrade every few days.

--Look a little farther down in that post, basically you backup /etc/ and anything else you don't want to lose, and use the ' migratcrit ' script to restore things (MODIFY FOR YOUR USE) after installing the latest CD version.

--If you frequently update the box, basically the only reason to install the latest CD is to get the latest KDE. They really should fix that.

Originally Posted by tinmith

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

--This thread may help you out:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5560#25532

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the link ... I had a look at it and it recommends that I grab the packages output from my current versus a new Knoppix CD.

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

Disclaimer - I haven't done this before... but grab the original CD that you used to install from, and compare the packages.txt with the results of ' dpkg -l '.

' dpkg -l >curpkgs.txt '
' diff packages.txt curpkgs.txt '

Ok, so if I just find what packages are new, and then run:

apt-get install PACKAGENAME=VERSION

Then this should install the latest version and bring the system up to date with the latest?

Is there any way to simplify this process? I imagine that if I ran the above there would be dependency conflicts and would have to keep re-running the process repeatedly until everything sorted itself out.

Also, for the Knoppix specific packages, what APT repository stores these? In dpkg -l I can see knoppix-* and knx-* packages but I can't tell where they come from, or are they only distributed with the CD and they are not apt-get'able?

thanks,
Wayne

**albertfuller** · 11-03-2003, 01:29 AM

apt-get management does not have to be cannon blast. If you are conservative then put in Knoppix and then reset apt-conf to stable. And you run apt-get -u upgrade. When you get the question if you want to continue after it tell you what you are going to do, say no; then copy/paster the packages to be upgraded to a text file and then do installs with you choosing the ones you want.

I have Knoppix 3.3 and have added to it with the current count at 1,800 packages from the Knoppix base of about 500. I am also have my apt-conf set to unstable and I don't see stuff breaking

**unamiccia** · 11-05-2003, 09:05 PM

Synaptic (a front end for apt) will give you a list of all upgradeable packages (basically a package list for apt-get upgrade), and you can go through this and select only the stuff you want to upgrade. Synaptic isn't on the Knoppix CD, though -- so you'll have to apt-get synaptic first.

**DRJ** · 11-05-2003, 10:04 PM

What I did is set up /home on a separate partition. All the upgrading I plan on doing is just security updates. When a new version of knoppix comes out I just plan on installing it from cd and overwriting the current version on disk.
When done, just reboot and edit fstab to mount my /home directory.

Kind of a brute force method, but I think it'll be just fine.

EDIT: Great first post...I just noticed you didn't want to use this method...oh well...back to lurking.