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4.1.1. Back up any data or configuration information Before upgrading your system, it is strongly recommended that you make a full backup, or at least back up any data or configuration information you can't afford to lose. The upgrade tools and process are quite reliable, but a hardware failure in the middle of an upgrade could result in a severely damaged system.

The main things you'll want to back up are the contents of /etc, /var/lib/dpkg, /var/lib/apt/extended_states and the output of dpkg --get-selections '*' (the quotes are important). If you use aptitude to manage packages on your system, you will also want to back up /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates. The upgrade process itself does not modify anything in the /home directory. However, some applications (e.g. Parts of the Mozilla suite, and the GNOME and KDE desktop environments) are known to overwrite existing user settings with new defaults when a new version of the application is first started by a user. As a precaution, you may want to make a backup of the hidden files and directories ( “ dotfiles”) in users' home directories.

This backup may help to restore or recreate the old settings. You may also want to inform users about this. Any package installation operation must be run with superuser privileges, so either log in as root or use su or sudo to gain the necessary access rights. The upgrade has a few preconditions; you should check them before actually executing the upgrade. 4.1.3. Prepare for downtime on services There might be services that are offered by the system which are associated with packages that will be included in the upgrade. If this is the case, please note that, during the upgrade, these services will be stopped while their associated packages are being replaced and configured.

During this time, these services will not be available. The precise downtime for these services will vary depending on the number of packages being upgraded in the system, and it also includes the time the system administrator answers the configuration questions from different package upgrades (if any). Notice that if the upgrade process is left unattended and the system requests input throughout the upgrade there is a high possibility of services being unavailable [] for a significant period of time. If the system being upgraded provides critical services for your users or the network [], you can reduce the downtime if you do a minimal system upgrade, as described in, followed by a kernel upgrade and reboot (see ), and then upgrade the packages associated with your critical services. Upgrade these packages prior to doing the full upgrade described in.

This way you can ensure that these critical services are running and available through the full upgrade process, and their downtime is reduced. 4.1.4. Prepare for recovery Because of the many changes in the kernel between lenny and squeeze regarding drivers, hardware discovery and the naming and ordering of device files, there is a real risk that you may experience problems rebooting your system after the upgrade. A lot of known potential issues are documented in this and the next chapters of these Release Notes.

For that reason it makes sense to ensure that you will be able to recover if your system should fail to reboot or, for remotely managed systems, fail to bring up networking. If you are upgrading remotely via an ssh link it is highly recommended that you take the necessary precautions to be able to access the server through a remote serial terminal. There is a chance that, after upgrading the kernel and rebooting, some devices will be renamed (as described in ) and you will have to fix the system configuration through a local console.

Also, if the system is rebooted accidentally in the middle of an upgrade there is a chance you will need to recover using a local console. The most obvious thing to try first is to reboot with your old kernel.

However, for various reasons documented elsewhere in this document, this is not guaranteed to work. If that fails, you will need an alternative way to boot your system so you can access and repair it. One option is to use a special rescue image or a Linux live CD. After booting from that, you should be able to mount your root file system and chroot into it to investigate and fix the problem. Another option we'd like to recommend is to use the rescue mode of the squeeze Debian Installer.

The advantage of using the installer is that you can choose between its many installation methods for one that best suits your situation. For more information, please consult the section “ Recovering a Broken System” in chapter 8 of the and the. 4.1.4.1. Debug shell during boot using initrd The initramfs-tools includes a debug shell [] in the initrds it generates.

If for example the initrd is unable to mount your root file system, you will be dropped into this debug shell which has basic commands available to help trace the problem and possibly fix it. Basic things to check are: presence of correct device files in /dev; what modules are loaded ( cat /proc/modules); output of dmesg for errors loading drivers. The output of dmesg will also show what device files have been assigned to which disks; you should check that against the output of echo $ROOT to make sure that the root file system is on the expected device. If you do manage to fix the problem, typing exit will quit the debug shell and continue the boot process at the point it failed. Of course you will also need to fix the underlying problem and regenerate the initrd so the next boot won't fail again. 4.2. Checking system status The upgrade process described in this chapter has been designed for upgrades from “ pure” lenny systems without third-party packages. For the greatest reliability of the upgrade process, you may wish to remove third-party packages from your system before you begin upgrading.

Direct upgrades from Debian releases older than 5.0 (lenny) are not supported. Please follow the instructions in the to upgrade to 5.0 first. This procedure also assumes your system has been updated to the latest point release of lenny. If you have not done this or are unsure, follow the instructions in. 4.2.1. Review actions pending in package manager In some cases, the use of apt-get for installing packages instead of aptitude might make aptitude consider a package as “ unused” and schedule it for removal. In general, you should make sure the system is fully up-to-date and “ clean” before proceeding with the upgrade.

Because of this you should review if there are any pending actions in the package manager aptitude. If a package is scheduled for removal or update in the package manager, it might negatively impact the upgrade procedure. Note that correcting this is only possible if your sources.list still points to lenny and not to stable or squeeze; see. To perform this review, launch aptitude in “ visual mode” and press g ( “ Go”). If it shows any actions, you should review them and either fix them or implement the suggested actions.

If no actions are suggested you will be presented with a message saying “ No packages are scheduled to be installed, removed, or upgraded”. 4.2.3. Checking packages status Regardless of the method used for upgrading, it is recommended that you check the status of all packages first, and verify that all packages are in an upgradable state. The following command will show any packages which have a status of Half-Installed or Failed-Config, and those with any error status. # dpkg --audit You could also inspect the state of all packages on your system using dselect, aptitude, or with commands such as # dpkg -l pager or # dpkg --get-selections '*' >~/curr-pkgs.txt It is desirable to remove any holds before upgrading. If any package that is essential for the upgrade is on hold, the upgrade will fail.

Note that aptitude uses a different method for registering packages that are on hold than apt-get and dselect. You can identify packages on hold for aptitude with # aptitude search '~ahold' If you want to check which packages you had on hold for apt-get, you should use # dpkg --get-selections grep hold If you changed and recompiled a package locally, and didn't rename it or put an epoch in the version, you must put it on hold to prevent it from being upgraded. The “ hold” package state for apt-get can be changed using: # echo package_name hold dpkg --set-selections Replace hold with install to unset the “ hold” state.

If there is anything you need to fix, it is best to make sure your sources.list still refers to lenny as explained in. 4.2.5. Unofficial sources and backports If you have any non-Debian packages on your system, you should be aware that these may be removed during the upgrade because of conflicting dependencies. If these packages were installed by adding an extra package archive in your /etc/apt/sources.list, you should check if that archive also offers packages compiled for squeeze and change the source line accordingly at the same time as your source lines for Debian packages.

Some users may have unofficial backported “ newer” versions of packages that are in Debian installed on their lenny system. Such packages are most likely to cause problems during an upgrade as they may result in file conflicts []. Has some information on how to deal with file conflicts if they should occur. 4.3. Preparing sources for APT Before starting the upgrade you must set up apt's configuration file for package lists, /etc/apt/sources.list. Apt will consider all packages that can be found via any “ deb” line, and install the package with the highest version number, giving priority to the first line in the file (thus where you have multiple mirror locations, you'd typically first name a local hard disk, then CD-ROMs, and then HTTP/FTP mirrors). A release can often be referred to both by its codename (e.g. Lenny, squeeze) and by its status name (i.e.

Oldstable, stable, testing, unstable). Referring to a release by its codename has the advantage that you will never be surprised by a new release and for this reason is the approach taken here. It does of course mean that you will have to watch out for release announcements yourself. If you use the status name instead, you will just see loads of updates for packages available as soon as a release has happened. 4.3.1. Adding APT Internet sources The default configuration is set up for installation from main Debian Internet servers, but you may wish to modify /etc/apt/sources.list to use other mirrors, preferably a mirror that is network-wise closest to you. Debian HTTP or FTP mirror addresses can be found at (look at the “ list of Debian mirrors” section). HTTP mirrors are generally speedier than FTP mirrors.

For example, suppose your closest Debian mirror is When inspecting that mirror with a web browser or FTP program, you will notice that the main directories are organized like this: amd64/. To use this mirror with apt, you add this line to your sources.list file: deb squeeze main contrib Note that the ` dists' is added implicitly, and the arguments after the release name are used to expand the path into multiple directories.

After adding your new sources, disable the previously existing “ deb” lines in sources.list by placing a hash sign ( #) in front of them. 4.3.2. Adding APT sources for a local mirror Instead of using HTTP or FTP package mirrors, you may wish to modify /etc/apt/sources.list to use a mirror on a local disk (possibly mounted over NFS). For example, your package mirror may be under /var/ftp/debian/, and have main directories like this: /var/ftp/debian/dists/squeeze/main/binary- amd64/. /var/ftp/debian/dists/squeeze/contrib/binary- amd64/. To use this with apt, add this line to your sources.list file: deb file:/var/ftp/debian squeeze main contrib Note that the ` dists' is added implicitly, and the arguments after the release name are used to expand the path into multiple directories. After adding your new sources, disable the previously existing “ deb” lines in sources.list by placing a hash sign ( #) in front of them.

4.3.3. Adding APT source from CD-ROM or DVD If you want to use CDs only, comment out the existing “ deb” lines in /etc/apt/sources.list by placing a hash sign ( #) in front of them. Make sure there is a line in /etc/fstab that enables mounting your CD-ROM drive at the /cdrom mount point (the exact /cdrom mount point is required for apt-cdrom). For example, if /dev/hdc is your CD-ROM drive, /etc/fstab should contain a line like: /dev/hdc /cdrom auto defaults,noauto,ro 0 0 Note that there must be no spaces between the words defaults,noauto,ro in the fourth field. To verify it works, insert a CD and try running # mount /cdrom # this will mount the CD to the mount point # ls -alF /cdrom # this should show the CD's root directory # umount /cdrom # this will unmount the CD Next, run: # apt-cdrom add for each Debian Binary CD-ROM you have, to add the data about each CD to APT's database. 4.4. Upgrading packages The recommended way to upgrade from previous Debian GNU/Linux releases is to use the package management tool apt-get.

Microsoft Access Color Picker Download there. In previous releases, aptitude was recommended for this purpose, but recent versions of apt-get provide equivalent functionality and also have shown to more consistently give the desired upgrade results. Don't forget to mount all needed partitions (notably the root and /usr partitions) read-write, with a command like: # mount -o remount,rw / mountpoint Next you should double-check that the APT source entries (in /etc/apt/sources.list) refer either to “ squeeze” or to “ stable”.

There should not be any sources entries pointing to lenny. 4.4.1. Recording the session It is strongly recommended that you use the /usr/bin/script program to record a transcript of the upgrade session. Then if a problem occurs, you will have a log of what happened, and if needed, can provide exact information in a bug report. To start the recording, type: # script -t 2>~/upgrade-squeeze step.time -a ~/upgrade-squeeze step.script or similar. If you have to rerun the typescript (e.g.

If you have to reboot the system) use different step values to indicate which step of the upgrade you are logging. Do not put the typescript file in a temporary directory such as /tmp or /var/tmp (files in those directories may be deleted during the upgrade or during any restart).

The typescript will also allow you to review information that has scrolled off-screen. If you are at the system's console, just switch to VT2 (using Alt+ F2) and, after logging in, use less -R ~root/upgrade-squeeze.script to view the file. After you have completed the upgrade, you can stop script by typing exit at the prompt.

If you have used the -t switch for script you can use the scriptreplay program to replay the whole session: # scriptreplay ~/upgrade-squeeze.time ~/upgrade-squeeze.script. 4.4.3. Make sure you have sufficient space for the upgrade You have to make sure before upgrading your system that you have sufficient hard disk space when you start the full system upgrade described in. First, any package needed for installation that is fetched from the network is stored in /var/cache/apt/archives (and the partial/ subdirectory, during download), so you must make sure you have enough space on the file system partition that holds /var/ to temporarily download the packages that will be installed in your system. After the download, you will probably need more space in other file system partitions in order to both install upgraded packages (which might contain bigger binaries or more data) and new packages that will be pulled in for the upgrade.

If your system does not have sufficient space you might end up with an incomplete upgrade that might be difficult to recover from. Apt-get can show you detailed information of the disk space needed for the installation. Before executing the upgrade, you can see this estimate by running: # apt-get -o APT::Get::Trivial-Only=true dist-upgrade [. ] XXX upgraded, XXX newly installed, XXX to remove and XXX not upgraded. Need to get xx.xMB of archives. After this operation, AAAMB of additional disk space will be used. Note Running this command at the beginning of the upgrade process may give an error, for the reasons described in the next sections.

In that case you will need to wait until you've done the minimal system upgrade as in and upgraded your kernel before running this command to estimate the disk space. If you do not have enough space for the upgrade, apt-get will warn you with a message like this: E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/.

In this situation, make sure you free up space beforehand. • Remove packages that have been previously downloaded for installation (at /var/cache/apt/archives). Cleaning up the package cache by running apt-get clean will remove all previously downloaded package files. • Remove forgotten packages. If you have popularity-contest installed, you can use popcon-largest-unused to list the packages you do not use that occupy the most space.

You can also use deborphan or debfoster to find obsolete packages (see ). Alternatively you can start aptitude in “ visual mode” and find obsolete packages under “ Obsolete and Locally Created Packages”. • Remove packages that take up too much space and are not currently needed (you can always reinstall them after the upgrade). You can list the packages that take up the most disk space with dpigs (available in the debian-goodies package) or with wajig (running wajig size). You can list packages that take up most of the disk space with aptitude.

Start aptitude in “ visual mode”, select Views → New Flat Package List, press l and enter ~i, press S and enter ~installsize, then it will give you nice list to work with. • Remove translations and localization files from the system if they are not needed. You can install the localepurge package and configure it so that only a few selected locales are kept in the system. This will reduce the disk space consumed at /usr/share/locale. • Temporarily move to another system, or permanently remove, system logs residing under /var/log/. • Use a temporary /var/cache/apt/archives: You can use a temporary cache directory from another filesystem ( USB storage device, temporary hard disk, filesystem already in use.). • remove the packages that have been previously downloaded for installation: # apt-get clean • copy the directory /var/cache/apt/archives to the USB drive: # cp -ax /var/cache/apt/archives /media/usbkey/ • mount the temporary cache directory on the current one: # mount --bind /media/usbkey/archives /var/cache/apt/archives • after the upgrade, restore the original /var/cache/apt/archives directory: # umount /media/usbkey/archives • remove the remaining /media/usbkey/archives.

You can create the temporary cache directory on whatever filesystem is mounted on your system. • Do a minimal upgrade of the system (see ) or partial upgrades of the system followed by a full upgrade. This will make it possible to upgrade the system partially, and allow you to clean the package cache before the full upgrade. Note that in order to safely remove packages, it is advisable to switch your sources.list back to lenny as described in.

4.4.4. Minimal system upgrade In some cases, doing the full upgrade (as described below) directly might remove large numbers of packages that you will want to keep. We therefore recommend a two-part upgrade process, first a minimal upgrade to overcome these conflicts, then a full upgrade as described in. To do this first, run: # apt-get upgrade This has the effect of upgrading those packages which can be upgraded without requiring any other packages to be removed or installed. The minimal system upgrade can also be useful when the system is tight on space and a full upgrade cannot be run due to space constrains.

4.4.5. Upgrading the kernel and udev The udev version in squeeze requires a kernel of version 2.6.26 or newer with the CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED option disabled and the CONFIG_INOTIFY_USER and CONFIG_SIGNALFD options enabled. Because the standard Debian kernels in lenny (version 2.6.26) have CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED enabled, and the udev version in lenny will not provide all the functionality expected by the latest kernels, special care must be taken when upgrading to avoid putting your system in an unbootable state. Booting the 2.6.26 kernel from lenny with the udev from squeeze may result in a failure to correctly assign names to network devices, and will also fail to apply certain additional permissions to block devices (such as access by the disk group). The software itself will appear to be working, but some rules (for example, network-based rules) will not be loaded properly. It is therefore strongly recommended that you upgrade the kernel on its own at this point, to ensure a compatible kernel is available before upgrading udev.

To proceed with this kernel upgrade, run: # apt-get install linux-image-2.6- flavor See for help in determining which flavor of kernel package you should install. The move of some firmware to separate packages in the non-free archive (see ) means that it may be necessary to install additional firmware packages after upgrading to the new kernel to support some hardware.

Some hardware that was operating correctly before the upgrade might fail to work once the kernel is upgraded. Look out for warning messages from the kernel install or initramfs generation scripts, and make sure the necessary firmware packages are installed.

Users of the grub bootloader should make sure that update-grub is run as part of the kernel upgrade, or run it manually. Immediately after upgrading the kernel, you should also install the new udev to minimize the risk of other incompatibilities caused by using the old udev with a new kernel []. You can do this by running: # apt-get install udev You should reboot the system [] once you have upgraded both the kernel and udev. Note The upgrade process for other releases recommended the use of aptitude for the upgrade. This tool is not recommended for upgrades from lenny to squeeze.

This will perform a complete upgrade of the system, i.e. Install the newest available versions of all packages, and resolve all possible dependency changes between packages in different releases. If necessary, it will install some new packages (usually new library versions, or renamed packages), and remove any conflicting obsoleted packages. When upgrading from a set of CD-ROMs (or DVDs), you will be asked to insert specific CDs at several points during the upgrade. You might have to insert the same CD multiple times; this is due to inter-related packages that have been spread out over the CDs. New versions of currently installed packages that cannot be upgraded without changing the install status of another package will be left at their current version (displayed as “ held back”). This can be resolved by either using aptitude to choose these packages for installation or by trying apt-get -f install package.

4.5.2. Expected removals The upgrade process to squeeze might ask for removal of packages in the system. The precise list of packages will vary depending on the set of packages that you have installed.

These release notes give general advice on these removals, but if in doubt, it is recommended that you examine the package removals proposed by each method before proceeding. Some common packages that are expected to be removed include: autofs (replaced by autofs5), dhcp3 (replaced by isc-dhcp), madwifi-source and python2.4 (replaced by python2.6).

For more information about packages obsoleted in squeeze, see. 4.5.3. Errors running aptitude or apt-get If an operation using aptitude, apt-get, or dpkg fails with the error E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room the default cache space is insufficient. You can solve this by either removing or commenting lines you don't need in /etc/apt/sources.list or increasing the cache size. The cache size can be increased by setting APT::Cache-Limit in /etc/apt/apt.conf.

The following command will set it to a value that should be sufficient for the upgrade: # echo 'APT::Cache-Limit '12500000';' >>/etc/apt/apt.conf This assumes that you do not yet have this variable set in that file. 4.5.4. Conflicts or Pre-Depends loops Sometimes it's necessary to enable the APT::Force-LoopBreak option in APT to be able to temporarily remove an essential package due to a Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop. Apt-get will alert you of this and abort the upgrade. You can work around this by specifying the option -o APT::Force-LoopBreak=1 on the apt-get command line.

It is possible that a system's dependency structure can be so corrupt as to require manual intervention. Usually this means using apt-get or # dpkg --remove package_name to eliminate some of the offending packages, or # apt-get -f install # dpkg --configure --pending In extreme cases you might have to force re-installation with a command like # dpkg --install /path/to/package_name.deb. 4.5.5. File conflicts File conflicts should not occur if you upgrade from a “ pure” lenny system, but can occur if you have unofficial backports installed. A file conflict will result in an error like: Unpacking (from ). Dpkg: error processing (--install): trying to overwrite ` ', which is also in package dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing: You can try to solve a file conflict by forcibly removing the package mentioned on the last line of the error message: # dpkg -r --force-depends package_name After fixing things up, you should be able to resume the upgrade by repeating the previously described apt-get commands.

4.5.6. Configuration changes During the upgrade, you will be asked questions regarding the configuration or re-configuration of several packages. When you are asked if any file in the /etc/init.d directory, or the /etc/manpath.config file should be replaced by the package maintainer's version, it's usually necessary to answer `yes' to ensure system consistency. You can always revert to the old versions, since they will be saved with a.dpkg-old extension. If you're not sure what to do, write down the name of the package or file and sort things out at a later time. You can search in the typescript file to review the information that was on the screen during the upgrade. 4.5.7. Change of session to console If you are running the upgrade using the system's local console you might find that at some points during the upgrade the console is shifted over to a different view and you lose visibility of the upgrade process. For example, this will happen in desktop systems when gdm is restarted.

To recover the console where the upgrade was running you will have to use Ctrl+ Alt+ F1 to switch back to the virtual terminal 1 if in the graphical startup screen or use Alt+ F1 if in the local text-mode console. Replace F1 with the function key with the same number of the virtual terminal the upgrade was running in. You can also use Alt+ Left Arrow or Alt+ Right Arrow to switch between the different text-mode terminals. 4.5.8.1. Evolution Evolution (the GNOME Desktop mail client) has been updated from version 2.22 to 2.30. This changes the storage format used by the package for local data and there is a possibility of data loss if the upgrade is performed whilst evolution is running. Exiting the application itself may not be sufficient, as various related components will continue to run in the background. To avoid any potential issues, it is recommended that you completely exit your desktop environment before beginning the upgrade to squeeze.

As part of the upgrade process, evolution will check whether any related processes are running and will recommend that they be closed. A secondary check for processes will then be performed; if necessary, a choice will be offered between allowing the remaining processes to be killed or aborting the upgrade in order to resolve the situation by hand. 4.6. Upgrading your kernel and related packages This section explains how to upgrade your kernel and identifies potential issues related to this upgrade. You can either install one of the linux-image-* packages provided by Debian, or compile a customized kernel from source. Note that a lot of information in this section is based on the assumption that you will be using one of the modular Debian kernels, together with initramfs-tools and udev.

If you choose to use a custom kernel that does not require an initrd or if you use a different initrd generator, some of the information may not be relevant for you. 4.6.1. Installing the kernel metapackage When you dist-upgrade from lenny to squeeze, it is strongly recommended that you install a new linux-image-2.6-* metapackage.

This package may be installed automatically by the dist-upgrade process. You can verify this by running: # dpkg -l 'linux-image*' grep ^ii If you do not see any output, then you will need to install a new linux-image package by hand. To see a list of available linux-image-2.6 metapackages, run: # apt-cache search linux-image-2.6- grep -v transition If you are unsure about which package to select, run uname -r and look for a package with a similar name. For example, if you see ' 2.6.26-2-686', it is recommended that you install linux-image-2.6-686. You may also use apt-cache to see a long description of each package in order to help choose the best one available. For example: # apt-cache show linux-image-2.6-686 You should then use apt-get install to install it. Once this new kernel is installed you should reboot at the next available opportunity to get the benefits provided by the new kernel version.

For the more adventurous there is an easy way to compile your own custom kernel on Debian GNU/Linux. Install the kernel-package tool and read the documentation in /usr/share/doc/kernel-package. Alternatively, you can also use the kernel sources, provided in the linux-source-2.6 package. You can make use of the deb-pkg target available in the sources' makefile for building a binary package. There are some differences in these two approaches, please consult the respective package's documentation.

If possible, it is to your advantage to upgrade the kernel package separately from the main dist-upgrade to reduce the chances of a temporarily non-bootable system. Note that this should only be done after the minimal upgrade process described in.

4.6.2. Device enumeration reordering In lenny and later, a new kernel mechanism for hardware discovery may change the order in which devices are discovered on your system on each boot, affecting the device names assigned to them. For example, if you have two network adapters that are associated with two different drivers, the devices eth0 and eth1 refer to may be swapped. For network devices, this reordering is normally avoided by the definitions at /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules for udev. Since these rules were already in place in lenny, no additional action should be required when upgrading to squeeze to get the benefit of stable network device names.

Please note, however, that this udev mechanism means that a given network device name is tied to a particular piece of hardware; if you, for instance, exchange ethernet adapters in a deployed squeeze system, the new adapter will get a new interface name instead of using the existing one. To reuse an existing device name for new hardware, you will need to delete the associated entry from /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.

For storage devices, you may be able to avoid this reordering by using initramfs-tools and configuring it to load storage device driver modules in the same order they are currently loaded. However, in light of other changes to the storage subsystem of the Linux kernel as described at, this is usually not worth the effort and it is recommended instead to use device names that are guaranteed to be stable over time, such as the UUID aliases [] in the /dev/disk/by-uuid/ directory or LVM device names in /dev/mapper/. 4.6.3. Boot timing issues (waiting for root device) If an initrd created with initramfs-tools is used to boot the system, in some cases the creation of device files by udev can happen too late for the boot scripts to act on. The usual symptoms are that the boot will fail because the root file system cannot be mounted and you are dropped into a debug shell: Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems: - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline) - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?) - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?) - Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev) ALERT!

/dev/something does not exist. Dropping to a shell! (initramfs) But if you check afterwards, all devices that are needed are present in /dev. This has been observed in cases where the root file system is on a USB disk or on RAID, especially if LILO is used. A workaround for this issue is to use the boot parameter rootdelay= 9.

The value for the timeout (in seconds) may need to be adjusted. 4.7.1. Upgrade to GRUB 2 During the upgrade, you will normally have been offered the option to 'chainload' GRUB 2: that is, to keep GRUB Legacy as the primary boot loader but to add an option to it to load GRUB 2 and then start your Debian GNU/Linux system from that. This allows you to verify that GRUB 2 works on your system before committing to use it permanently. Once you have confirmed that GRUB 2 works, you should switch to using it properly: the chainloading setup is only intended to be used temporarily.

You can do this by running upgrade-from-grub-legacy. The GRUB Manual has on the changes between GRUB Legacy and GRUB 2, some of which may require changes to complex configurations. If you have not modified your boot loader configuration, you should not need to do anything further. 4.9. Obsolete packages Introducing several thousand new packages, squeeze also retires and omits more than four thousand old packages that were in lenny. It provides no upgrade path for these obsolete packages. While nothing prevents you from continuing to use an obsolete package where desired, the Debian project will usually discontinue security support for it a year after squeeze's release [], and will not normally provide other support in the meantime.

Replacing them with available alternatives, if any, is recommended. There are many reasons why packages might have been removed from the distribution: they are no longer maintained upstream; there is no longer a Debian Developer interested in maintaining the packages; the functionality they provide has been superseded by different software (or a new version); or they are no longer considered suitable for squeeze due to bugs in them. In the latter case, packages might still be present in the “ unstable” distribution. Detecting which packages in an updated system are “ obsolete” is easy since the package management front-ends will mark them as such. If you are using aptitude, you will see a listing of these packages in the “ Obsolete and Locally Created Packages” entry.

Dselect provides a similar section but the listing it presents might differ. Also, if you have used aptitude or apt-get to manually install packages in lenny it will have kept track of those packages you manually installed and will be able to mark as obsolete those packages pulled in by dependencies alone which are no longer needed if a package has been removed. Aptitude and apt, unlike deborphan, will not mark for removal packages that you manually installed, as opposed to those that were automatically installed through dependencies. To remove automatically installed packages that are no longer used, run: # apt-get autoremove There are additional tools you can use to find obsolete packages such as deborphan, debfoster or cruft. Deborphan is highly recommended, although it will (in default mode) only report obsolete libraries: packages in the “ libs” or “ oldlibs” sections that are not used by any other packages.

Do not blindly remove the packages these tools present, especially if you are using aggressive non-default options that are prone to produce false positives. It is highly recommended that you manually review the packages suggested for removal (i.e. Their contents, size and description) before you remove them. The often provides additional information on why the package was removed. You should review both the archived bug reports for the package itself and the archived bug reports for the.

The list of obsolete packages includes. • The plone content management suite. This has been done on request by the developers to use the Unified Installer for Linux, which they consider their only supported deployment platform.

The recommended tool for installing Plone on a Debian GNU/Linux system is the Unified Installer, available for download from • nessus, the vulnerability scanning server and its associated libraries and other software. It has been deprecated in favor of the software provided by OpenVAS which includes openvas-server and openvas-client. As there is no automatic upgrade path you will have to install OpenVAS and manually move over your Nessus service configuration (users, certificates, etc.) to OpenVAS. • postgresql-8.3, successor is postgresql-8.4.

• mysql-server-5.0, successor is mysql-server-5.1. • python2.4, successor is python2.6.

• Java 5 software including the packages sun-java5-jre and sun-java5-bin, successor is Java 6: sun-java6-jre and associated packages. • apt-proxy is no longer provided, alternatives to this tool include apt-cacher-ng, apt-cacher and approx. Although no automatic upgrade path exists, user of apt-proxy can switch to these alternatives by manually installing any of these packages. • Some of Xorg's video drivers are no longer available in squeeze and are obsolete.

This includes xserver-xorg-video-cyrix, xserver-xorg-video-i810, xserver-xorg-video-imstt, xserver-xorg-video-nsc, xserver-xorg-video-sunbw2, and xserver-xorg-video-vga. They might be removed through the upgrade.

Users should install xserver-xorg-video-all instead. • The utility used in lenny to display a splash image at boot time, usplash, is no longer available. It has been replaced by plymouth. 4.9.1. Dummy packages Some packages from lenny have been split into several packages in squeeze, often to improve system maintainability.

To ease the upgrade path in such cases, squeeze often provides “ dummy” packages: empty packages that have the same name as the old package in lenny with dependencies that cause the new packages to be installed. These “ dummy” packages are considered obsolete packages after the upgrade and can be safely removed. Most (but not all) dummy packages' descriptions indicate their purpose. Package descriptions for dummy packages are not uniform, however, so you might also find deborphan with the --guess- * options (e.g. --guess-dummy) useful to detect them in your system.

Note that some dummy packages are not intended to be removed after an upgrade but are, instead, used to keep track of the current available version of a program over time.

$ apt-get source firmware-linux-free $ sed -n 240,260p linux-2.6-2.6.32/firmware/keyspan_pda/keyspan_pda.S movx @dptr, a inc dptr djnz r1, clear_rx_ring_loop;;; turn on the RS-232 driver chip (bring the STANDBY pin low);; set OEB.1 mov a, #02H mov dptr,OEB movx @dptr,a;; clear PB1 mov a, #00H mov dptr,OUTB movx @dptr,a;; set OEC.[127] mov a, #0x86 mov dptr,OEC movx @dptr,a;; set PORTCCFG.[01] to route TxD0,RxD0 to serial port mov dptr, PORTCCFG mov a, #0x03 movx @dptr, a There, now you’ve seen source code of free firmware 😉 • says. This seems like too much information for most users. Even technical users shouldn’t have to care. Fundamentally, there should be only one question with two choices: – Ignore missing non-free firmware files, even though this network card and this wireless card will probably not work without it (default) – Make it work, with full knowledge that this stuff doesn’t conform to the DFSG.

Manually adding stuff to the sources.list, figuring out which firmware package is needed, regenerating the initramfs etc – these are all things that can and should happen without user intervention (well, only if the “use non-free” decision has been made) – it should just work. Expect plenty of bait comments from ‘someone’ and ‘winfan’ and suchlike. If your values are not compatible with the “ Free Software Guidelines” then you are probably just here to troll.

Read the contract, and you will then know more about the background of your operating system (Debian). Phrases like ‘free’ and ‘non-free’ will make sense then. I run a Debian desktop and laptop both running Squeeze and with all firmware ‘free’ incl. Graphics Cards and wifi. Had I opted for a bargain bin laptop or bought a 6 year old second hand model from ebay, then I might have had to, instead, go for the If you run an operating system that is proprietary, then you probably don’t even get a CD anymore, have a locked down mandatory update system that only works via an insecure browser, where updates cannot be picked and chosen based on ‘your’ needs. Feature creep via update system, and back door Xbox DRM if you download a recent windows game from the online store.

There are upsides and downsides to everyone’s choice. If you are happy in a proprietary setup, then stay there, and hang out with some proprietary buddies rather than reading Debian blogs. You know have a good whinge, about not being able to easily get hold of a windows 7 generic install CD, or paying an extra $20 just so your daughter can easily change the desktop background on her new netbook. Perhaps it’s that your Mac you only bought 18 months ago, needs an OS upgrade that leaves it unable to work with your LCD or older printer. Oh the upside is that you make no distinction between ‘free’ and ‘non-free’, so weigh it all up folks. MeI’m totally happy with Debian and think Squeeze is the best release yet 🙂 • J Dempsey says.