Release Notes for &debian; &release; ("&releasename;"), &arch-title;

%dynamicdata; %shareddata; ]> Release Notes for &debian; &release; ("&releasename;"), &arch-title; Josip Rodin, Bob Hilliard, Adam Di Carlo, Anne Bezemer, Rob Bradford (current), Frans Pop (current), Andreas Barth (current) debian-doc@lists.debian.org &docid; Introduction

The primary goals of these Release Notes are to inform users of major changes in this release of the &debian; distribution, to provide information on how to upgrade safely from the previous release to the current release and finally to inform users of known potential issues users could encounter when upgrading to or using the &releasename; release.

Note that it is impossible to list every known issue and that therefore a selection has been made based on a combination of the expected prevalence and impact of issues.

The most recent version of this document is always available at . If the version you are reading is more than a month oldOn front page's of the PDF version and in the footer of the online, HTML, version, you might wish to obtain the latest version.

Please note that we only support and document upgrading from the previous release of Debian (in this case, the upgrade from &oldreleasename;). If you need to upgrade from older releases, we suggest you read previous editions of the release notes and upgrade to &oldreleasename; first.

Reporting bugs on this document

We have attempted to test all the different upgrade steps described in this document and we have also tried to anticipate all the possible issues our users might encounter.

Nevertheless, If you think you have found any bug in this documentation (incorrect information or information that is missing), please file a bug in the against the release-notes package.

Contributing upgrade reports

We welcome any information from users related to upgrades from &oldreleasename; to &releasename;. If you are willing to share information please file a bug in the against the upgrade-reports package with your results.

Please provide the following information when submitting your upgrade report:

Session logs using script, as described in .

The status of your package database before and after the upgrade, using the backup procedure described at .

Your aptitude logs, available at /var/log/aptitude.

Note: you should take some time to review and remove any sensitive and/or confidential information from the logs before including them in a bug report as the information will be published in a public database. Sources for this document

This document uses debiandocsgml. Its sources are available in the Debian Documentation Project's CVS. You can use the to access its files individually through the web and see their changes. For more information on how to access the CVS please consult the .

What's new in &debian; &release;

This release adds official support for the AMD64 architecture which supports 64-bit processors from both Intel (EM64T) and AMD (AMD64). During the previous release, &debian; 3.1 ('sarge'), an unofficial version of this port was available.

Official support for the Motorola 680x0 ('m68k') architecture has been dropped because it did not meet the criteria set by the Debian Release Managers. The most important underlying reasons are performance and limited upstream support for essential toolchain components. However, the m68k port is expected to remain active and available for installation even if not a part of this official stable release.

The following are the officially supported architectures for &debian; &releasename;:

Intel x86 ('i386')

Alpha ('alpha')

SPARC ('sparc')

PowerPC ('powerpc')

ARM ('arm')

MIPS ('mips' (Big endian) and 'mipsel' (Little endian))

Intel Itanium ('ia64')

HP PA-RISC ('hppa')

S/390 ('s390')

AMD64 ('amd64')

You can read more about port status, and port-specific information for your architecture at the .

This is only the second official release of &debian; for the &arch-title; architecture. We feel that it has proven itself sufficiently to be released. However, because it has not had the exposure (and hence testing by users) that our releases on other architectures have had, you may encounter a few bugs. Please use our to report any problems; make sure to mention the fact that the bug is on the &architecture; platform.

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&debian; &release; for the &arch-title; architecture ships with kernel version &kernelversion;.

What's new in the distribution?

This new release of Debian again comes with a lot more software than its predecessor &oldreleasename;; the distribution includes over 6,200 new packages, for a total of over 18,000 packages. Most of the software in the distribution has been updated: over 10,500 software packages (this is 67% of all packages in &oldreleasename;). Also, a significant number of packages (over 3400, 22% of the packages in &oldreleasename;) have for various reasons been removed from the distribution. You will not see any updates for these packages and they will be marked as 'obsolete' in package management front-ends.

With this release &debian; switches from XFree86 to the 7.1 release of X.Org, which includes support for a greater range of hardware and better autodetection. This allows the use of Compiz, which is one of the first compositing window managers for the X Window System, taking full advantage of hardware OpenGL-acceleration for supported devices.

&debian; again ships with several desktop applications and environments. Amongst others it now includes the desktop environments GNOME 2.14With some modules from GNOME 2.16., KDE 3.5.5a, and Xfce 4.4. Productivity applications have also been upgraded, including the office suites OpenOffice.org 2.0.4a and KOffice 1.6 as well as GNUcash 2.0.5, GNUmeric 1.6.3 and Abiword 2.4.6

Updates to other desktop applications include the upgrade of Evolution 2.6.3 and Gaim 2.0. The Mozilla suite has also been updated, but the main programs have been renamed: iceweasel (version 2.0.0.2) is the unbranded Firefox web browser and

This release also includes, amongst others, the following software updates:

the GNU C library, version 2.3.6. the GNU Compiler Collection 4.1 as default compiler. language interpreters: PHP 5.5, Python 2.4. server software:

e-mail servers: Exim 4.63 (default email server for new installations), Postfix 2.3, Courier 0.53, Cyrus 2.2. web servers: Apache 2.2, fnord 1.10 database servers: MySQL 5.0.32, PostgreSQL 8.1 the OpenSSH server, version 4.3. name servers: Bind 9.3, maradns 1.2. directory server: OpenLDAP 2.3

The official &debian; distribution now ships on 19 to 23 binary CDs (depending on the architecture) and a similar number of source CDs. A DVD version of the distribution is also available.

Secure APT

debian-archive-keyring.

In its default configuration, apt-secure will warn if packages are downloaded from sources that are not authenticated. Future releases might force all packages to be verified before downloading them. Administrators of unofficial apt repositories are encouraged to generate a cryptographic key and sign their Release files, as well as providing a secure way to distribute their public keys.

For more information please read apt-secure's manual page, the chapter of the .

debian-volatile now an official service
The
This means that it no longer has a /etc/apt/sources.list accordingly if you were already using this service.
.What's new in the installation system? There has been a lot of development on the Debian Installer since its first official release with &oldreleasename; resulting in both improved hardware support and some exciting new features. In these Release Notes we'll only list the major changes in the installer. If you are interested in an overview of the detailed changes since &oldreleasename;, please check the release announcements for the &releasename; beta and RC releases available from the Debian Installer's . Major changes No reboot during the installation The installation used to be split into two parts: setting up the base system and making it bootable, followed by a reboot and after that the execution of For &releasename; the second stage has been integrated into Debian Installer itself. This has a number of advantages, including increased security and the fact that after the reboot at the end of the installation the new system should already have the correct timezone and, if you installed the Desktop environment, will at once start the graphical user interface. UTF-8 encoding default for new systems The installer will set up systems to use UTF-8 encoding rather than the old language-specific encodings (like ISO-8859-1, EUC-JP or KOI-8). More flexible partitioning It is now possible to set up filesystems on an LVM volume using guided partitioning. The installer is also able to set up encrypted filesystems. Using manual partitioning you have the choice between /boot) as logical volumes. Graphical user interface If you prefer a graphical user interface, try booting the installer with The functionality of the graphical installer is almost identical to the regular installer, only the presentation differs. There is one exception: the graphical frontend does not support setting up encrypted partitions using random keys. Note: the graphical user interface is not available for all architectures. ]]> Graphical user interface For &arch-title; a separate installation image using a graphical user interface is available on an experimental basis. It is known to work on most CHRP systems that have an ATI graphics card, but has been insufficiently tested on &arch-title; to include it on the normal installation CDs. If you'd like to try the graphical installer, look for the "gtk-miniiso" image. ]]> Rescue mode You can use the installer to solve problems with your system, for example when it refuses to boot. The first steps will be just like a regular installation, but the installer will not start the partitioner. Instead it will offer you a menu of rescue options. Activate the rescue mode by booting the installer with rescue/enable=true. Using sudo instead of root account During expert installations you can choose to not set up the root account (it will be locked), but instead set up Cryptographic verification of downloaded packages Packages downloaded with the installer are now cryptographically checked using SELinux The packages needed for SELinux support have been promoted to priority "standard". This means that they will be installed by default if you select the Standard task during installation. However, SELinux support is not enabled by default. If you want to secure your system using SELinux, you will need to enable it manually after the installation. Simplified mail configuration The installation system setups a basic configuration for the system's mail server which will only provide for local e-mail delivery, if the "standard system" is installed. The mail server will be unavailable to other systems connected to the same network. If you want to configure your system to handle e-mail not local to the system (either to send e-mail or to receive it) you will have to reconfigure the mail system after installation. Desktop selection The installation system will install a GNOME desktop as the default desktop if the user asks for one. However, users wishing to install alternate desktop environments can easily do so by adding boot parameters: tasks="standard, kde-desktop" for KDE and tasks="standard, xfce-desktop" for Xfce. ISO images for alternate desktop environments will also be available. New languages Thanks to the huge efforts of translators, Debian can now be installed in 47 languages using the text-based installation user interface. This is six languages more than in &oldreleasename;. Languages added in this release include Belarusian, Esperanto, Estonian, Kurdish, Macedonian, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Wolof. Languages dropped in this relase due to lack of translation updates include Persian and Welsh. Users that do not wish to use any locale can now select . Simplified localization and timezone selection Configuration of language, countries and timezones have been simplified to reduce the amount of information needed from the user. The installer will now guess what the system's country and timezone is based on the language selected, or will provide a limited selection if it cannot. Users can still introduce obscure combinations if need be. Improved system-wide localization Most of the internationalization and localization tasks that were previously handled by the localization-config tool are now included in the stock &debian; installer or in packages themselves. This means that selection of a language will automatically install packages necessar for that language (dictionaries, documentation, fonts...) both in standard and desktop enviroments. Configuration that is no longer handled automatically include the papersize configuration and some advanced keyboard settings on Xorg for some languages. ]]> Automated installation A lot of the changes mentioned in the previous section also imply changes in the support in the installer for automated installation using preconfiguration files. This means that if you have existing preconfiguration files that worked with the &oldreleasename; installer, you cannot expect these to work with the new installer without modification. The good news is that the now has a separate appendix with extensive documentation on using preconfiguration. The &releasename; installer introduces some exciting new features that allow further and easier automation of installs. It also adds support for advanced partitioning using RAID, LVM and encrypted LVM. See the documentation for details.New installations The Debian Installer is the official installation system for Debian. It offers a variety of installation methods. Which methods are available to install your system depends on your architecture. Images of the installer for &releasename; and the Installation Guide can be found on the . The Installation Guide is also included on the first CD/DVD of the official Debian CD/DVD sets, at: /doc/install/manual/language/index.html You may also want to check the for debian-installer for a list of known issues. The installer can only be used to install on alpha systems which support the SRM console. Be sure to switch your system to SRM before starting the installation. If your machine supports only the AlphaBIOS/ARC console, you can still install &releasename; using a (minimal) &oldreleasename; installation and a subsequent upgrade. For more information about the different consoles please read the references on the . ]]> Issues with framebuffer on &arch-title; Because of display problems on some systems, framebuffer support is disabled by default for &arch-title; for most graphics cards. This can result in ugly display on systems that do properly support the framebuffer. If you see display problems in the installer, you can try booting the installer with the parameter framebuffer=true. Please let us know if the framebuffer is not used by default, but works for your hardware. ]]> System improvements Users installing &releasename; will benefit from some improvements in the &debian; operating system. Most of these improvements will be carried over to upgrades from &oldreleasename; but there are some changes that will only affect new installs: Development packages are now of Optional priority. This includes the standard C/C++-compiler, gcc, as well as some other software (dpkg-dev, flex, or make) and development headers (libc6-dev, linux-kernel-headers). This reduces the disk space needed for a standard installation. There are three different tasks for Desktop environments users can choose from: GNOME, KDE or Xfce. An installation of the Desktop task in &oldreleasename; would install both GNOME or KDE. The default inet superdaemon is openbsd-inetd instead of netkit-inetd. It will not be started if no services are configured, which is the default. The variant installed for The &releasename; installer sets up ext2 and ext3 filesystems so that they have "directory indexes", a feature which speeds operations on directories with many files. It does this by turning on the The &debian; installer will setup all localized environments using UTF-8 as the default encoding instead of language-specific encoding. Users upgrading to &releasename; will have to switch to this encoding by configuring their environment and locale definitions. Additional packages are pulled in based on the system being installed on or on the user configuration. Users running the installer in a laptop system will automatically get a set of packages specific for laptops, and so will users configuring a localized environment. Even though these packages are not pulled in when upgrading from &oldreleasename; to &releasename; they are still available for users through tasks. Users wishing to install these tasks just need to run Tasks item presented in the user interface. For more information please see the that describe the upgrade from &oldreleasename; to &releasename;. Popularity contest The installation system will again offer to install the Information from Upgrades from previous releases Preparing for the upgrade We suggest that before upgrading you also read the information in . That chapter covers potential issues not directly related to the upgrade process but which could still be relevant. Backup any data or configuration information Before upgrading your system, it is strongly recommended that you make a full backup, or at least backup 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 and the output of dpkg --get-selections "*" (the quotes are important). The upgrade process in 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 login as root or use The upgrade has a few preconditions; you should check them before actually executing the upgrade. Inform users in advance It's wise to inform all users in advance of any upgrades you're planning, although users accessing your system via an If you wish to take extra precautions, back up or unmount users' partitions (/home) before upgrading. You will probably have to do a kernel upgrade when upgrading to &releasename;, so a reboot will normally be necessary. Typically, this will be done after the upgrade is finished. Prepair a safe environment for the upgrade Distribution upgrade should be done either locally from a textmode virtual console (or a directly connected serial terminal), or remotely via an In order to gain extra safety margin, we suggest you to run upgrade processes in the virtual console provided by the If you are upgrading remotely via an ) 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 are chances you will need to recover using a local console. Review actions pending in package manager TODO Run aptitude interactively and check that there are no packages scheduled for removal or update (if a packages was installed with apt-get, aptitude may sometimes not know about it and list it for removal; in general, the system should be up-to-date and "clean"). 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 . You will first need enough hard disk on the filesystem 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 filesystem 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. Both # aptitude -y -s -f --with-recommends dist-upgrade [ ... ] XXX upgraded, XXX newly installed, XXX to remove and XXX not upgraded. Need to get xx.xMB/yyyMB of archives. After unpacking AAAMB will be used. Would download/install/remove packages. If you do not have enough space for the upgrade, make sure you free up space beforehand. You can: Remove packages that have been previously downloaded for installation (at /var/cache/apt/archive), cleaning up the package cache by running apt-get autoclean or aptitude autoclean will remove unused package files. If that does not give you enough space, you can clean up the package cache further by running apt-get clean or aptitude clean. Remove old packages you no longer use. If you have ). Alternatively you can start Remove packages taking up too much space, which are not currently needed (you can always reinstall them after the upgrade). You can list the packages that take up most of the disk space with wajig size). Temporarily move to another system, or permanently remove, system logs residing under /var/log/. Support for 2.2-kernels has been dropped In case you run a kernel prior to 2.4.1, you need to upgrade to (at least) the 2.4-series before upgrading Checking system status The upgrade process described in this chapter has been designed for upgrades from "pure" &oldreleasename; systems without 3rd party packages. It may be wise to remove these packages first. This procedure also assumes your system has been updated to the latest point release of &oldreleasename;. If you have not done this or are unsure, follow the instructions in . Disabling APT pinning If you have configured APT to install certain packages from a distribution other than stable (e.g. from testing), you may have to change your APT pinning configuration (stored in /etc/apt/preferences) to allow the upgrade of packages to the versions in the new stable release. Further information on APT pinning can be found in . 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 # 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 search "~ahold" | grep "^.h" If you want to check which packages you had on hold for # 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 # aptitude hold package_name If there is anything you need to fix, it is best to make sure your . 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 &releasename; 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 Debian's package management system normally does not allow a package to remove or replace a file owned by another package; not unless it has been defined to replace that package.. Section has some information on how to deal with file conflicts if they should occur. Manually unmarking packages To prevent # aptitude unmarkauto openoffice.org vim And 2.6 kernel images if you have installed them using a kernel metapackage: # aptitude unmarkauto $(dpkg-query -W 'kernel-image-2.6*' | cut -f1) Note: You can review which packages are marked as # aptitude search 'i~M <package name>' Preparing sources for APT Before starting the upgrade you must set up /etc/apt/sources.list. deb" line, and install the package with the highest version number, giving priority to the first mentioned lines (that way, in case of multiple mirror locations, you'd typically first name a local harddisk, then CD-ROMs, and then HTTP/FTP mirrors). A release can often be referred to by both its codename (e.g. &oldreleasename;, &releasename;) 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. 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 "Full list of mirrors" section). HTTP mirrors are generally speedier than FTP mirrors. For example, suppose your closest Debian mirror is &url-debian-mirror-eg;/. When inspecting that mirror with a web browser or FTP program, you will notice that the main directories are organized like this: &url-debian-mirror-eg;/dists/&releasename;/main/binary-&architecture;/... &url-debian-mirror-eg;/dists/&releasename;/contrib/binary-&architecture;/... To use this mirror with deb &url-debian-mirror-eg; &releasename; 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 " 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 before attempting to start the installation. With a reasonably extended Debian installation, you can expect at least 300 MB of downloaded data. Adding APT sources for a local mirror Instead of using HTTP or FTP packages 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 packages mirror may be under /var/ftp/debian/, and have main directories like this: /var/ftp/debian/dists/&releasename;/main/binary-&architecture;/... /var/ftp/debian/dists/&releasename;/contrib/binary-&architecture;/... To use this with deb file:/var/ftp/debian &releasename; 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 " Adding APT source from CD-ROM or DVD If you want to use CDs /etc/apt/sources.list by placing a hash sign ( 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 /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 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. Upgrading packages The recommended way to upgrade from previous &debian; releases is to use the package management tool aptitude. This program makes safer decisions about package installations than running apt-get directly. 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 "stable". There should not be any sources entries pointing to &oldreleasename;. Note: source lines for a CD-ROM will often refer to " 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 -a ~/upgrade-&releasename;.script 2>~/upgrade-&releasename;.time or similar. 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. Just switch to VT2 (using less -R ~root/upgrade-&releasename;.script to view the file. After you have completed the upgrade, you can stop If you have used the -t switch for # scriptreplay ~/upgrade-&releasename;.time ~/upgrade-&releasename;.script Updating the package list First the list of available packages for the new release needs to be fetched. This is done by executing: # aptitude update Running this the first time new sources are updated will print out some warnings related to the availability of the sources. These warnings are harmless and will not appear if you rerun the command again. Minimal system upgrade TODO Run # aptitude upgrade Followed by: Server system with no X, do a minimal upgrade with: # aptitude install initrd-tools Server system with some X, (xfree86-common) do a minimal upgrade with: # aptitude install initrd-tools x11-common Desktop system, use this instead: # aptitude install initrd-tools libfam0 xlibmesa-glu Note: After this minimal upgrade has finished you might want to consider upgrading the kernel before upgrading the full system, as described in . Doing so reduces the timeframe in which, if the system will not properly boot if rebooted accidentally. This is because the full upgrade will install a new version of Upgrading the rest of the system You are now ready to continue with the main part of the upgrade. Execute: # aptitude dist-upgrade 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, 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 aptitude -f install package. Possible issues during upgrade If an operation using 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 by increasing the cache size. The cache size can be increased by setting /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. Sometimes it's necessary to enable APT::Force-LoopBreak option in APT to be able to temporarily remove an essential package due to a Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop. -o APT::Force-LoopBreak=1 option on It is possible that a system's dependency structure can be so corrupt as to require manual intervention. Usually this means using # dpkg --remove package_name to eliminate some of the offending packages, or # aptitude --fix-broken 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 File conflicts should not occur if you upgrade from a "pure" &oldreleasename; system, but can occur if you have unofficial backports installed. A file conflict will result in an error like: Unpacking replacement <package-foo> ... dpkg: error processing <package-name-for-foo> (--unpack): trying to overwrite `<some-file-name>', which is also in package <package-bar> You can try to solve a file conflict by forcibly removing the package mentioned on the # dpkg -r --force-depends package_name After fixing things up, you should be able to resume the upgrade by repeating the previously described 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 or /etc/terminfo directories, 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 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. Upgrading your kernel and related packages You should upgrade the Linux kernel separately from the rest of your packages. You may wish to do so yourself, either by installing one of the All Linux kernel packages have been renamed from If you are currently using a kernel from the 2.4 series, the older stable Linux kernel series, you should upgrade to a 2.6 series kernel, as 2.4 is no longer supported in &releasename;. If you are currently using a kernel from the 2.2 series, you must upgrade to (at least) the 2.4 series, preferably to a 2.6 series kernel, prior to upgrading your packages. Some general issues associated with an upgrade to 2.6 are documented in . ]]> Installing the kernel metapackage When you dist-upgrade from &oldreleasename; to &releasename;, 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 | grep '^ii linux-image' 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 '2.4.27-3-686', it is recommended that you install 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 For the more adventurous there is an easy way to compile your own custom kernel on &debian;. Install the kernel-package tool and read the documentation in /usr/share/doc/kernel-package. Upgrading from a 2.6 kernel If you are currently running a 2.6 series kernel from &oldreleasename; this upgrade will take place after do a full upgrade of the system packages (as described in ). Take in account that the Consequently, you might want to upgrade to the latest kernel before doing the full upgrade. Before you can upgrade to the 2.6 series kernel available in &releasename; you will have to upgrade to the latest version of , and then do the following: # aptitude install initrd-tools coreutils linux-image-2.6-686 This step will also update libc6, install You can also take this step if you are using your own custom kernel and want to use the kernel available in &releasename;. If your kernel version is not supported by Upgrading from a 2.4 kernel TODO initrd-tools deprecated devfs deprecated &releasename; no longer provides support for devfs. It is recommended that users switch to udev for dynamic /dev management. Debian kernels no longer include support for devfs, so devfs users will need to convert their systems manually before upgrading to an &releasename; kernel. If you see the string 'devfs' in /proc/mounts, you are most likely using devfs. Any config files that reference devfs style names will need to be adjusted to use udev style names. Files that are most likely to refer to devfs style device names are /etc/fstab, /etc/lilo.conf, /boot/grub/menu.lst, etc. More information about potential issues is available in bug report . Standard kernels have SMP abilities Multiprocessor systems no longer require a *-smp flavour of the Linux kernel. For &arch-title; linux-image packages without the -smp suffix support both uniprocessor and multiprocessor systems. ]]> 386 kernel flavour deprecated Support for the 80386 sub-archicture for &arch-title; has been dropped in &releasename;. The 386 kernel flavor is no longer supported and has been replaced by the new 486 flavour. ]]> Device enumeration reordering &releasename; features a more robust mechanism for hardware discovery than previous releases. However, this may cause changes in the order devices are discovered on your system affecting the order in which device names are assigned. 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. Please note that the new mechanism means that if you e.g. exchange ethernet adapters in a running &releasename; system, the new adapter will also get a new interface name. For network devices, you can avoid this reordering by using the ifrename utility to bind physical devices to specific names at boot time. See and for more information. You can also avoid this by using udev rules, more specifically, through the definitions at /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules The rules there are automatically generated to have persistent names for network interfaces.. Both alternatives (ifrename and udev) should not be used at the same time. For storage devices, you can avoid this reordering by using However, removing and reloading modules after initial boot will affect this order. Also, your kernel may have some drivers linked statically, and these names will not appear in the output of lsmod. You may be able to decipher these driver names and load order from looking at /var/log/kern.log, or the output of dmesg. Add these module names to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules in the order they should be loaded at boot time. Some module names may have changed between &oldreleasename; and &releasename;. For example, sym53c8xx_2 has become sym53c8xx. You will then need to regenerate your initramfs image(s) by executing update-initramfs -k all. Once you are running an &releasename; kernel and /dev/disk/ hierarchy. Serial device reordering If you have an HP machine and you're using the MP serial console port (the connector labelled "console" on the 3-headed cable), this kernel upgrade will break your console! Please read the following information before upgrading. The console device will change from ttyS0 to ttyS1, ttyS2, or ttyS3 so Edit /etc/inittab to add a getty entry for /dev/ttyS1 (rx4640, rx5670, rx7620, rx8620, Superdome), /dev/ttyS2 (rx1600), or /dev/ttyS3 (rx2600). Edit /etc/securetty to add ttyS1, ttyS2, or ttyS3. Leave the existing ttyS0 entries in /etc/inittab and /etc/securetty so you can still boot old kernels. Edit /etc/elilo.conf to remove any "console=" arguments. Run Reboot and use the EFI boot option maintenance menu to select exactly one device for console output, input, and standard error. Then do a cold reset so the changes take effect. For the MP console, be careful to select the device with "Acpi(HWP0002,700)/Pci(...)/Uart" in the path. More details about these changes and troubleshooting hints are available at . ]]> Things to do before rebooting When aptitude dist-upgrade has finished, the "formal" upgrade is complete, but there are some other things that should be taken care of Rerun lilo If you are using # /sbin/lilo Notice this is needed even if you did not upgrade your system's kernel, as lilo's second stage will change due to the package upgrade. Also, review the contents of your /etc/kernel-img.conf and make sure that you have do_bootloader = Yes in it. That way the bootloader will always be rerun after a kernel upgrade. If you encounter any issues when running / to vmlinuz and initrd, as well as the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf for discrepancies. If you forgot to rerun For more information on .. In order to recover from this you will have to start up a media installation disk in . Upgrading mdadm mdadm now needs a configuration file to assemble MD arrays (RAID) from the initial ramdisk and during the system initialisation sequence. Please make sure to read and act upon the instructions in /usr/share/doc/mdadm/README.upgrading-2.5.3.gz after the package has been upgraded and before you reboot. The latest version of this file is available at ; please consult it in case of problems. Obsolete packages Introducing several thousand new packages, &releasename; also retires and omits more than two thousand old packages that were in &oldreleasename;. 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 &releasename;'s releaseOr for as long as there is not another release in that time frame. Typically only two stable releases are supported at any given time., 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 &releasename; due to bugs in them. In the later 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 to manually install packages in &oldreleasename; 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. Also, aptitude, unlike deborphan will not mark as obsolete packages that you manually installed, as opposed to those that were automatically installed through dependencies. 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 . Dummy packages Some packages from &oldreleasename; have been split into several packages in &releasename;, often to improve system maintainability. To ease the upgrade path in such cases, &releasename; often provides "dummy" packages: empty packages that have the same name as the old package in &oldreleasename; 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 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. Issues to be aware of for &releasename; Potential problems Sometimes, changes have side-issues we cannot reasonably avoid, or we expose bugs somewhere else. We document here the issues we are aware of. Please also read the errata, the relevant packages' documentation, bug reports and other information mentioned in . Certain networking site cannot be reached by TCP Since 2.6.17, Linux aggresively uses TCP window scaling which is specified in RFC 1323. Some servers have a broken behaviour, and announce wrong window sizes for themselves. Please see the bugs and for more information. Automatic poweroff stops working On some older systems, shutdown -h may not power off the system anymore (but just stop it). This happens because apm needs to be used there. Adding acpi=off apm=power_off to the kernel's command line, e.g. in for additional information. ]]> Apt downloads small files with update Support has been added to apt to download only the difference between packages files. This is handy for people with bad network connections, but people having a very nearby mirror may want to disable this feature. One can disable it by adding Acquire::Pdiffs "false"; to /etc/apt/apt.conf. ACPI support disabled for some HP laptop models in &releasename; kernel Certain models of HP laptops have an ACPI BIOS that is incompatible with the Linux 2.6.18 kernel shipped in &releasename;, which would prevent the fans from spinning up leading to unnecessary heat stress. Also, fans might not work after the system is suspended. The kernel therefore disables ACPI support internally when it detects certain ACPI BIOS versions. Models known to be affected by this change include the HP nx6125, nx6120, nx6325, nc6120 and nc6000 models. Users who require ACPI support on these systems may install a Linux 2.6.19 or later kernel. Please see Debian bug and , and Linux Kernel's bugs and for additional information. ]]> Upgrading to a 2.6 kernel The 2.6 kernel series contains major changes from the 2.4 series. Modules have been renamed and a lot of drivers have been partially or sometimes almost completely rewritten. Upgrading to a 2.6 kernel from an earlier version is therefore not a process to be undertaken lightly. This section aims to make you aware of some of the issues you may face. You are therefore strongly advised not to upgrade to a 2.6 kernel as part of the upgrade from &oldreleasename; to &releasename;. Instead, you should first make sure your system works correctly with either the old kernel or with a 2.4 kernel from &releasename; and do the upgrade to a 2.6 kernel later as a separate project. If you compile your own kernel from source, make sure you install If you use If you have entries in the /etc/modules file (the list of modules to be loaded during system boot), be aware that some module names may have changed. If this happens you will have to update this file with the new module names. For some SATA disk controllers, the device assigned to a drive and its partitions may change from /dev/hdX to /dev/sdX. If this happens, you will have to modify your /etc/fstab and bootloader configuration accordingly. Unless these changes are made correctly, your system may not boot correctlyIt will boot the kernel but will fail when trying to mount the root filesystem and will abort with an error waiting for root filesystem followed by unable to mount /dev/hdX ..not found. You can use the /dev/disk.. ]]> Once you have installed your 2.6 kernel, but before you reboot, make sure you have a recovery method. First, make sure that the bootloader configuration has entries for both the new kernel and the old, working 2.4 kernel. You should also ensure you have a "rescue" floppy or cdrom to hand, in case misconfiguration of the bootloader prevents you booting the old kernel. Keyboard configuration The most invasive change in the 2.6 kernels is a fundamental change of the input layer. This change makes all keyboards look like "normal" PC keyboards. This means that if you currently have a different type of keyboard selected (e.g. a USB-MAC or Sun keyboard), you will very likely end up with a non-working keyboard after rebooting with the new 2.6 kernel. If you can SSH into the box from another system, you can resolve this issue by running dpkg-reconfigure console-data, choosing the option "Select keymap from full list" and selecting a "pc" keyboard. If your console keyboard is affected, you will probably also need to reconfigure your keyboard for the X Window System. You can do this either by running dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg or by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf directly. Don't forget to read the documentation referred to in . This issue is unlikely to affect the &arch-title; architecture as all PS/2 and most USB keyboards will already be configured as a "normal" PC keyboard. ]]> Note that if you are using a USB keyboard, this may be configured as either a "normal" PC keyboard or as a USB-MAC keyboard. In the first case you will not be affected by this issue. ]]> ]]> Mouse configuration Again because of the changes in the input layer, you may have to reconfigure the X Window System and If you currently have X configured for /dev/sunmouse, you probably need to change this to /dev/psaux. ]]> Sound configuration For the 2.6 kernel series the ALSA sound drivers are recommended over the older OSS sound drivers. ALSA sound drivers are provided as modules by default. In order for sound to work, the ALSA modules appropriate for your sound hardware need to be loaded. In general this will happen automatically if you have, in addition to the alsa-base package, either the hotplug package or the discover package installed. The alsa-base package also "blacklists" OSS modules to prevent hotplug and discover from loading them. If you have OSS modules listed in /etc/modules, you should remove them. ]]> Switching to 2.6 may activate udev /dev directory and will populate that directory with devices supported by the kernel. It will also dynamically add and remove devices as kernel modules are loaded or unloaded respectively, working together with As Although /dev/video and /dev/radio). and /etc/udev for further information. ]]> XFree86 to X.Org transition The transition to X.Org involves some structural changes. In case all installed packages are from Debian and also included in &releasename;, the upgrade should work without problems. Experience has however shown there are a few changes to be aware of as they can potentially cause issues during the upgrade. The most important change is that /usr/X11R6/bin has been dropped and only remains as a symlink to /usr/bin. This means this directory has to be empty at the time the new packages are installed. The new packages conflict with most packages that used /usr/X11R6/bin, but in some cases manual intervention may be needed. Please remember to not run upgrades within an X session. In case the upgrade aborts during X.Org installation, you should check if any files are still left in /usr/X11R6/bin. You can then use dpkg -S to find out which Debian package installed that file (if any), and remove such packages with dpkg --remove. Please make a note which packages you remove, so that you can install substitute packages later on. Before continuing with the upgrade, all files in /usr/X11R6/bin need to be removed. Please read for more details and other issues. Upgrading from exim to exim4 One of the packages that has been obsoleted by the &releasename; release is the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) The on the Debian Wiki, and the README file can be found at and inside the packages as well. The README file has a chapter about Packaging, which explains the different package variations we offer, and it has a chapter about Updating from Upgrading apache2 Apache has been upgraded to the new version 2.2. Although this shouldn't impact the average user, there are some potential issues to be aware of. contains the upstream changes. Please read this page, and remember that especially: all modules need to be recompiled authorization modules have been resorted and renamed some configuration options have been renamed Debian-specific changes include that the string SSL is no longer defined, as ssl is now supported by the default package. Deprecated insecure php configurations For many years, turning on the Starting with this release, the Debian security team does not provide security support for a number of PHP configurations which are known to be insecure. Most importantly, issues resulting from If you run legacy applications that require README.Debian.security file in the PHP documentation directory (/usr/share/doc/php4, /usr/share/doc/php5). Security status of Mozilla products The Mozilla programs firefox and thunderbird (rebranded in Debian to iceweasel and icedove, respectively), are important tools for many users. Unfortunately the upstream security policy is to urge users to update to new upstream versions, which conflicts with Debian's policy not to ship large functional changes in security updates. We cannot predict it today, but during lifetime of &releasename; the Debian Security Team may come to a point where supporting Mozilla products is no longer feasible and announce the end of security support for Mozilla products. You should take this into account when deploying Mozilla and consider alternatives available in Debian if the absence of security support would pose a problem for you. KDE desktop KDE media handling has changed in the version available in &releasename; from using device:/ to media:/. Some user configuration files might have stored device:/ links in them which should be adapted. Notably, ~/.kde/share/apps/konqsidebartng/virtual_folders/services contains this reference and can be safely deleted as it will not be created when setting up new users. There have been many changes in the KDE desktop environment from the version shipped in &oldreleasename; to the version in &releasename;, you can find more information in the . GNOME desktop changes and support If you used the GNOME desktop in &oldreleasename; you will not benefit of some of the changes introduced in the default configuration in Debian for &releasename;. In some extreme cases the GNOME desktop might not properly handle your old configuration and might not behave properly. If you have not heavily invested in configuring your GNOME desktop you might want to move the the .gconf directory in user's home directories to a different name (such as .gconf.old) so that it gets recreated, with the default configuration for &releasename;, upon starting a new session. With the release of &releasename;, Debian no longer contains packages for most of the obsolete version 1 release of GNOME. Although some packages remain in order to support some Debian packages which have not yet been updated to GNOME 2. Packages for GTK1.2 remain fully maintained. There have been many changes in the GNOME desktop environment from the version shipped in &oldreleasename; to the version in &releasename;, you can find more information in the . Default editor If you were using Administrators that wish to change the default editor for all users will have to update the alternatives system using: # update-alternatives --config editor Users wishing to change the default editor can define the environment variable EDITOR by introducing the following lines in their own profiles: EDITOR=vi export EDITOR alias editor=$EDITOR More information on &debian; Further reading Beyond these release notes and the installation guide, further documentation on &debian; is available from the Debian Documentation Project (DDP), whose goal is to create high quality documentation for Debian users and developers. Documentation including the Debian Reference, Debian New Maintainers Guide, and Debian FAQ are available, and many more. For full details of the existing resources see the . Documentation for individual packages is installed into /usr/share/doc/package, this may include copyright information, Debian specific details and any upstream documentation. Getting help There are many sources of help, advice and support for Debian users, but these should only be considered if research into documentation of the issue has exhausted all sources. This section provides a short introduction into these which may be helpful for new Debian users. Mailing lists The mailing lists of most interest to Debian users are the debian-user list (English) and other debian-user-. Please check the archives for answers to your question prior to posting and also adhere to standard list etiquette. Internet Relay Chat Debian has an IRC channel dedicated to the support and aid of Debian users located on the OFTC IRC network which exists to provide interactive services to peer-directed project communities. To access the channel, point your favourite IRC client at &debian-irc-server; and join #debian. Please follow the channel guidelines, respecting other users fully. For more information on OFTC please visit the . Reporting bugs We strive to make Debian GNU/Linux a high quality operating system, however that does not mean that the packages we provide are totally free of bugs. Consistent with Debian's "open development" philosophy and as a service to our users, we provide all the information on reported bugs at our own Bug Tracking System (BTS). The BTS is browseable at . If you find a bug in the distribution or in packaged software that is part of it, please report it so that it can be properly fixed for next releases. Reporting bugs requires a valid email address, we ask for this so that we can trace bugs and developers can get in contact with submitters should they need more information. You can submit a bug report using the program reportbug or manually using email. You can read more about the Bug Tracking System and how to use it by reading the reference cards (available at /usr/share/doc/debian if you have doc-debian installed) or online at the . Contributing to Debian You do not need to be an expert to contribute to Debian. By assisting users with problems on the various user support you are contributing to the community. Identifying (and importantly solving) problems related to the development of the distribution by participating on the development is also extremely helpful. To maintain Debian's high quality distribution and help developers track them down and fix them. If you have a way with words then you may want to contribute more actively by helping to write or existing documentation into your own language. If you can dedicate more time, you could manage a piece of the Free Software collection within Debian. Especially helpful is if people adopt or maintain items that people have requested for inclusion within Debian, the details this information. If you have an interest in specific groups then you may find enjoyment in contributing to some of Debian's subprojects which include ports to particular architectures, and . In any case, if you are working in the free software community in any way, as a user, programmer, writer or translator you are already helping the free software effort. Contributing is rewarding and fun, and as well as allowing you to meet new people it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside. Managing your &oldreleasename; system This appendix contains information on how to make sure you can install or upgrade &oldreleasename; packages before you upgrade to &releasename;. This should only be necessary in specific situations. Upgrading your &oldreleasename; system Basically this is no different than any other upgrade of &oldreleasename; you've been doing. The only difference is that you first need to make sure your package list still contains &oldreleasename; packages as explained in . You should upgrade to the latest &oldreleasename; point release: r5, published February 2007. Checking your sources list If any of the lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list refer to 'stable', you are effectively already "using" &releasename;. If you have already run apt-get update, you can still get back without problems following the procedure below. If you have also already installed packages from &releasename;, there probably is not much point in installing packages from &oldreleasename; anymore. In that case you will have to decide for yourself whether you want to continue or not. It is possible to downgrade packages, but that is not covered here. Open the file /etc/apt/sources.list with your favorite editor (as root) and check all lines beginning with deb http: or deb ftp: for a reference to " If you have any lines starting with deb file:, you will have to check for yourself if the location they refer to contains a &oldreleasename; or a &releasename; archive. deb cdrom:. Doing so would invalidate the line and you would have to run If you've made any changes, save the file and execute # apt-get update to refresh the package list.