[TriLUG] Re: Debian apt-get dist-upgrade

[Corey Mutter]

> I believe (other Debian gurus will have to correct me) that it's
> "apt-get dist-upgrade" and since you mention it - I'm not clear as to
> why one might run that as opposed to just the apt-get upgrade which
> upgrades all programs loaded on the computer. So any enlightment, as
> always, is welcome :)

I did an upgrade from potato -> woody this way on a couple of machines
(it really pleasantly surprised me how things Just Worked). Didn't
have to change my apt sources - the way I noticed woody was out was
when "apt-get upgrade" wanted to upgrade a whole mess of
packages. ("stable" changed)

Something I learned doing this - you have to run multiple cycles of
"apt-get dist-upgrade" until no packages are left to upgrade, because
it will hold back any packages that it can't upgrade just yet because
the upgrade would break dependencies. Make sure you finish this
process - things may be wonky (if upgrading across releases) if you
just run "apt-get dist-upgrade" once and then try to use the
system... 

Corey