[conspire] More Firefox Addon problems - this tie from MS

[Don Marti]

begin Rick Moen quotation of Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 11:38:38PM -0800:
> Quoting Ed Biow (biow at sbcglobal.net):
> 
> > I tried installing sidux on a machine I gave to my atheist-son (being
> > a non-believer I can't really have a God-son).  It wasn't a good call,
> > IMO. Updating the system requires dropping to init 3 with apt-get
> > dist-upgrade, which is not going to be easy for a new user.
> 
> Um, excuse me, but why on earth would updating require changing
> runlevels?
> 
> I personally treat an HD-installed system that started from a Sidux live
> CD the same as I do any other Debian system.  Which means one can
> upgrade it from any runlevel without particular distinction, though
> obviously one where you have networking is useful.  

If you're doing a _huge_ upgrade, it's probably best
to do:
  apt-get update
  apt-get --fix-broken install  # just in case APT is confused
  apt-get clean

  ...then "apt-get --purge remove" the current versions of things you
  no longer run, or do it from the GUI package manager...

  apt-get autoremove # get rid of libraries that were only there to 
                     # support things you no longer run
  apt-get -d dist-upgrade # Make sure the download succeeds before doing
                          # the final command

and then finally do your upgrade.  Bonus points for
upgrading apt itself somewhere in there, so you're
installing the new stuff with the new apt.  I think.

> Anyway, they recommend apt-get because it's excellent in a variety of
> ways, and is in general smarter than other setups, without dumb
> modifications to package operation defaults sometimes introduced by
> various front ends.  I tend to agree with them -- and not just within
> the context of Sidux nor of Debian-unstable, but on deb-based
> distributions generally.  However, that doesn't mean you cannot get by
> using other things, which people obviously do all over the place, every
> day.

It's also easy to run remotely, if you set up your
friend's machine with sshd.

> > With my friends' sidux computer they never got it together to upgrade
> > it. I would try to upgrade it when I visited but there was so much to
> > be downloaded that it would never finish a "apt-get dist-upgrade -d"
> > with their limited bandwidth by the time my spouse wanted go home (I'd
> > installed every game I could find for the kid, so the / partition is
> > huge). 
> 
> Well, _that_ was one big mistake, right there.  It's a rolling
> distribution:  Installing a huge amount of software means you're going
> to subsequently get massive amounts of package churn.  Don't Do That,
> Then.

Once you do have your software load down to a
sensible level:

sudo apt-get install cron-apt

(It's a tool that will do the "-d" part for you in
the background, so that you have all the packages
already downloaded when you start your upgrade.)

-- 
Don Marti                                 +1 510-332-1587 mobile
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org