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; What's new in the Release Notes

[The most recent version of this document is always available at . If your version is more than a month old, you might wish to download 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.

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. Upgrading from this unofficial version should be possible using these Release Notes, but is not supported.

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 9000 new packages. Most of the software in the distribution has been updated: almost 6500 software packages (this is 73% of all packages in &oldreleasename;). Also, a significant number of packages 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 XOrg, 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 current desktop applications. Amongst others it now includes GNOME 2.14, KDE 3.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0.

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

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?New installations The installer offers a variety of installation methods. Which methods are available to install your system depends on your architecture. If you are making a new installation of Debian, you should read the Installation Guide, which is available on the Official CD at: /doc/install/manual/language/index.html or on the Internet from the . You may also want to check the for debian-installer. 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 parameter debian-installer/framebuffer=true. Please let us know if the framebuffer is not used by default, but works for your hardware. ]]> Popularity contest Unlike for the previous release, the installation system will again offer to install the Information from Upgrades from previous releases Preparing for the upgrade 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. It's wise to inform all users in advance of any upgrades you're planning, although users accessing your system via an /home) before upgrading. A reboot will not normally be necessary, unless you also plan to upgrade your kernel. Distribution upgrade should be done either locally from a textmode virtual console (or a directly connected serial terminal), or remotely via an 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. 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 clean. Remove old packages you no longer use. If you have ) Remove packages that take up too much space and you do not have an inmediate need for (you can always reinstall them after the upgrade). You can list 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 the 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. 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". Note: source lines for a CD-ROM will often refer to " 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 -a ~/upgrade-to-&releasename;.typescript 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 ~root/upgrade-to-&releasename;.typescript to view the file. After you have completed the upgrade, you can stop Updating the package list First the list of available packages for the new release needs to be fetched. This is done by executingWe use : # apt-get update Upgrading aptitude Upgrade tests have shown that &releasename;'s version of # aptitude install aptitude You will be shown a list of the changes that will be made and asked you to confirm them. You should take a careful look at the proposed changes, especially packages that will be removed by the upgrade, before you confirm. In some cases if a large number of packages is listed for removal, you may be able to reduce this list by "pre-upgrading" selected other packages alongside install aptitude perl instead of install aptitude. Upgrading doc-base If you have , it must be upgraded before the rest of the system too. Reason is that it may fail if # dpkg -l doc-base If the line of output begins with "i" then it is installed and must be upgraded before continuing. # aptitude install doc-base Upgrading the rest of the system You are now ready to continue with the main part of the upgrade. Execute: # aptitude -f --with-recommends 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 (such as console-tools-libs). 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. The Possible issues during upgrade Please check also in about issues explicitly listed there. 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 separate from the rest of your packages. You may wish to do so yourself, either by installing one of the The linux kernel packages have been renamed to linux-* (from kernel-*) to clean up the namespace. 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 Etch. If you are currently using a kernel from the 2.2 series, you must upgrade to (at least the 2.4 series, better to a 2.6 series kernel prior to upgrading your packages. Some issues associated with an upgrade to 2.6 are documented in initrd-tools deprecated initrd-tools is no longer supported and has been superseded by initramfs-tools and yaird. Upgrading to an etch kernel will cause initramfs-tools to be installed by default. If you are upgrading from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel for the first time, you must use initramfs-tools. yaird will cause linux-image-2.6 installations to fail when running on a 2.2 or 2.4 kernel. devfs deprecated Etch no longer provides support for devfs. It is recommended that users transition to udev for dynamic /dev management. Debian kernels not longer include support for devfs, so devfs users will need to manually convert their systems before upgrading to an etch kernel. If you see the string 'devfs' in /proc/mounts, you are 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 include /etc/fstab, /etc/lilo.conf, /boot/grub/menu.lst, etc. More information about possible issues are in the bug report . standard kernels contain SMP abilities Multiprocessor systems no longer require a *-smp flavour of the Linux kernel. linux-image packages without the -smp suffix support have gained support for multiprocessor systems on amd64, i386 and ia64 since Etch. ]]> i386 kernel flavour deprecated Support for the 80386 sub-archicture for i386 has been dropped in etch. The 386 kernel flavor is no longer supported and has been replaced by the new 486 flavour. ]]> Device enumeration reordering Etch 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 maybe 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. For storage devices, you can avoid this reordering by using initramfs-tools and configuring initramfs-tools to load storage devices in the same order they are currently loaded. To do this, identify the order the storage modules on your system were loaded by looking at the output of lsmod. lsmod lists modules in the reverse order that they were loaded in, i.e., the first module in the list was the last one loaded. 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 boottime. Some module names may have changed between sarge and etch. 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 etch kernel and udev, you may reconfigure your system to access disks by an alias that is not dependent upon driver load order. These aliases reside in the /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 elilo to install the bootloader with new configuration. 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. Details about these changes: Prior to this patch, serial device names depended on the HCDP, which in turn depends on EFI console settings. After this patch, the naming always stays the same, regardless of firmware settings. If you want to have multiple devices in the EFI console path, you can, but Linux won't be able to deduce which console to use, so it will default to using VGA. You can use "console=hcdp" (the UART device from the EFI path) or "console=ttyS<n>" to select the device directly. Troubleshooting No kernel output after "Uncompressing Linux... done": You're using an MP port as the console and specified "console=ttyS0". This port is now named something else. Remove the "console=" option. Multiple UARTs selected as EFI console devices, and you're looking at the wrong one. Make sure only one UART is selected (use the EFI Boot Manager "Boot option maintenance" menu). You're physically connected to the MP port but have a non-MP UART selected as EFI console device. Either move the console cable to the non-MP UART, or change the EFI console path to the MP UART (the MP UART is the one with "Acpi(HWP0002,700)/Pci(...)/Uart" in it.) Long pause (60+ seconds) between "Uncompressing Linux... done" and start of kernel output: No early console, probably because you used "console=ttyS<n>". Remove the "console=" option. Kernel and init script output works fine, but no "login:" prompt: Add getty entry to /etc/inittab for console tty. Use the table in above or look for the "Adding console on ttyS<n>" message that tells you which device is the console. "login:" prompt, but can't login as root: Add entry to /etc/securetty for console tty. ]]> upgrading the kernel 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 automatically be installed 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 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 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. 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 Read /usr/share/doc/xfree86-common/README.Debian-upgrade.gz for more info on the upgrade of the X window system packages. This is relevant for users of all previous Debian releases. In short, you need to read it. 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 meantioned in . Certain networking site cannot be reached by TCP Since 2.6.17, Linux uses TCP window scaling which is specified in RFC 1323 in an aggressive way. Some servers have a broken behaviour, and announce wrong window sizes for themself. Please see the bugs and for more information. Automatic poweroff stops working On some older systems, shutdown -h will not poweroff anymore (but just stop the system). This happens because apm needs to be used there. Adding acpi=off apm=power_off to the kernels command line, e.g. via grub or lilo configurations file will fix this issue. Please see the bug for more information. Apt downloads small files with update There has been support 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 want to disable this feature. One can disable it by adding Acquire::Pdiffs "false"; to /etc/apt/apt.conf. 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 correctly. ]]> 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-xfree86 or by editing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 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 contained structural changes. In case all installed packages are from Debian and also contained in Etch, the upgrade should by its own. Experience has however shown there are typical issues to be aware of. The most important issue is that /usr/X11R6/bin has been dropped and only remains as a symlink to /usr/bin. This means it has to be empty at the time of the upgrade. The new packages conflict with most packages that used /usr/X11R6/bin, but in some cases manual interaction is needed. Please remember to not run upgrades within an X sessions. In case the upgrade aborts during X.Org installation, you have to find which file(s) are still left in /usr/X11R6/bin. You can use dpkg -S to find out which Debian package installed that file (if any), and remove such packages with dpkg --remove. Please note down which packages you remove, so that you can install substituting packages later on. Before continueing with the installation, all files in /usr/X11R6/bin need to be removed. Please read for more details and other issues. Upgrading from exim 3 to exim4 One of the packages that has been obsoleted by the etch release is the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) exim, which has been replaced by the entirely new package exim4. exim 3 has been unmaintained upsteam for years, and Debian has stopped support for exim 3 as well. Please upgrade your exim 3 installation to exim4 manually. Since exim4 is already part of sarge, you can choose to do the upgrade on your sarge system before the etch upgrade, or after the etch upgrade at your convenience. Just remember that your exim 3 package is not going to be upgraded and that it won't get security support after support for sarge was discontinued. The exim4 packages in Debian are extensively documented. The package's home page is 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 Exim 3, which will help you in doing the actual transition. Upgrading apache2 Apache has been upgraded to the new version 2.2. Though this shouldn't have impact on the average user, there are some 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 optiones changed name 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 register_globals settings in PHP has been known to be insecure and dangerous, and has defaulted to off for some time now. This configuration is now finally deprecated on Debian systems as too dangerous. The same applies to flaws in safe_mode and open_basedir, which haven also been unmaintained for some time. 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 that make use of the register_globals setting being turned on are not addressed. If you run legacy applications that require register_globals, enable it for the respective paths only, e.g. through the Apache configuration file. More information is available in the 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 are important tools for many users. Unfortunately their security policy is to urge users to update to new upstream versions, which collides with our policy to not ship large functional changes in a security update. We cannot predict it today, but during &releasename; lifetime the Debian Security Team might come to a point where supporting Mozilla products is no longer feasible and, and would then announce the end of security support for Mozilla products. You should take this into account when deploying Mozilla and consider alternatives inside Debian if that poses a problem to you. 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 . 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.