apt-get dist-upgrade

[charon]

Hi!

I recently made an "apt-get dist-upgrade". Still everything works like before, but I wonder why suddenly starting the X-Server takes so much longer? Any ideas?

Thanks!

[ecormier]

Have you watched your boot sequence....I have the same prob....when I watch my boot sequence after "apt-get upgrade" ("apt-get dist-upgrade" is the same thing right??) I see alot of the same lines twice (modules trying to get loaded twice, saying some are blacklisted, etc) ... once before a reinstall I had things coming up 3 times!! is it something with knoppix/debian or is it just a debian thing. And does anyone know how (and where) I can edit my boot script (to delete doubles...and to tinker for speedy boots)

Cheers,
Eugene

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noob
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[mr_ed]

In general, using upgrade on Knoppix is one of those things called Not A Good Idea.

Klaus Knopper and friends have crafted a finely-tuned piece of German engineering by taking pieces from different development branches (releases) of Debian.

Piece A may be from "stable" and Piece B from "testing," while Piece C is custom-tailored for the job. The people assembling them know what they're doing and make sure everything works together.

But upgrade doesn't. If your entire installation is from stable, or from testing, then yes - the Debian developers have made sure things cooperate. (Somewhat less so in testing than in stable, though right now testing - sarge - works very well.)

Knoppix is designed to run from CD, and installing it to HD is something of a hack. The best way to upgrade Knoppix is to wait for the next release, where everything will once again be pre-tested and "guaranteed" to work. (Of course there are no guarantees of anything in life, let alone free software.)

Normal people (which probably lets out most of us) should really only upgrade software for one of three reasons: security patch, bug fix, or missing features.

If it's your hobby, though, and you enjoy playing around with Linux and trying out new stuff, another distro might work better for you. Straight Debian has come a long way in hardware detection and ease of maintenance - what they call the net-install of sarge works very well and can be tweaked with settings from Knoppix if necessary.

Then use synaptic or gnome-apt to keep stuff up to date. Or if you like KDE better than Gnome, use that and kpackage (or, again, syanptic). They do a great job.

If you really want to run a mixed-release Debian, that can be done too - but you'll want to dig a little deeper to use the right apt tools for it.

My two cents.

-- Ed

[mr_ed]

does anyone know how (and where) I can edit my boot script

Are you sure you want to know?

Start by looking at /etc/inittab. There's probably nothing here you'll want to change unless you don't like having 6 consoles opened in addition to the desktop - that's set up down at the bottom of the file with the references to getty.

But /etc/inittab will tell you where to look next: /etc/init.d/rcS and /etc/init.d/rc. In addition to the actions there, you'll also be pointed to the scripts in the directories /etc/rc*.d, in particular /etc/rcS.d and /etc/rc5.d.

It turns out that the entries in these directories are symbolic links to the real scripts back in /etc/init.d, but it's important to look there anyway because the scripts are executed in alphabetical order as they appear in the /etc/rc*.d directories (/etc/rcS.d first, then /etc/rc5.d, and then /etc/rc*.d when the run level is changed from 5 to something else).

(Note that run level 5 isn't the default on all Linuxes - it's even different on Debian. You really do have to check /etc/inittab.)

One script to pay special attention to is /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig because it shows you the purpose of many of the boot parameters (cheatcodes). If you don't use USB devices, nousb can save a few seconds at startup. Much less so noacpi if you don't have a laptop and nopcmcia and nofirewire if you don't use those.

when I watch my boot sequence after "apt-get upgrade" ... I see alot of the same lines twice

Don't watch.

-- Ed

[CrashedAgain]

[quote="mr_ed"]In general, using upgrade on Knoppix is one of those things called Not A Good Idea.

Piece A may be from "stable" and Piece B from "testing," while Piece C is custom-tailored for the job. The people assembling them know what they're doing and make sure everything works together.

But upgrade doesn't. [quote]

I agree with your first statement ("Not a Good Idea") but I have to disagree with the second. There is absolutely nothing wrong with running a mixed stable/testing/unstable system and upgrade is quite capable of handling a mixed system. What would be the sense of having applications in 'unstable' for testing if they could only be used on a 100% 'unstable' system? All upgrade does with applications is replaces the existing version with a newer version from the appropriate stable/testing/unstable repository if there is a newer version. This is no different than getting the latest version with 'apt-get -t unstable <package>'.

Where upgrade gets knoppix systems into disarray is that it also fiddles with the startup routines to try to convert everything to some arbitrary Debian standard. The most noticeable effect of this is that it sets every available service to autostart in all runlevels. Some of these (notably 'NIS') are very slow to start and there is no need to have a bunch of services you are not using auto starting. You can correct this using sys-V-init to only startup the services you want. For ones you really don't want (like Nis); 'apt-get remove --purge nis' is the way to go.

I have been told you can configure debconf (which is what apt-get upgrade uses) to not do so much fiddling or at least to ask first but I haven't tried it yet.

As you say in your second post, the start sequences are all in /etc/rc*** directories. Take a look at what this looks like on your knoppix CD, a standard knoppix system has only knoppix-autoconfig, knoppix-hd-conf & mountall.sh. Knoppix-autoconfig is not used on a Debian style hdinstall. Knoppix-hd-install shuts down then restarts internet services etc for some reason.
It has caused some problems after an upgrade by shutting these down then being unable to restart them. The cure seems to be edit the script so it doesn't do the shut down/restart.

[ecormier]

Hey, if I wanted to turn a blind eye to whats going on behind the scenes I'd use MS-Windows. In fact even back in the day when all I had was DOS I still messed with the startup scripts (autoexec.bat/config.sys). I realise things are going to be a bit more complicated than that, but why should I use Linux if I don't want to learn. It seems to me to be a bit like wanting to live in Germany, but not wanting to learn to speak German. If I wanted just an OS, I'd use Windows in terms of easy setup and no-brain usage.....I want something more..and I've finally seen a bit into linux...and it truely is incredible ..I've only been using Linux/Knoppix about 3 months now.....and I'm beginning to learn how to use it....but I want more , much more......I want the "I know every directory/files usage" knowledge.....and I know I can't get it without "breaking" it (I have 2 partitions-1 for knoppix and 1 for my data.....I have a quick easy system (I have the data of every program that I use -X11-config, sunbird-icalendar, thunderbird-email, firefox-bookmarks, gaim-buddy list, etc...all symbolically linked to this other partition) re-install is about a half hour and I've screwed the sytem up at least a dozen times in the past three weeks.....when I understand more I'll go for the "Perfect" setup.....but for now there's still a lot on my plate.
BTW - thanks Mr. Ed I'll be messing with my inittab as soon as I get a chance
If you think about the analogy that is sometimes used "Windows is a car with the hood welded shut..." doesn't that seem to suggest that they want you to open up the hood and take a look??

Cheers
Eugene - greasy boy from being under the hood