Re: Both Upgrades and New Installs? DVD Necessary?
On Sun, 28 May 2000, Tril wrote:
> 1. Is it possible to have a binary CD #1 (or even a full binary CD set)
> just that is optimal for both upgrades and new installs? I have seen some
> people express a need for one or the other, but no one seems to be
> accepting the fact that there is a need for compromise between the two. I
> believe it is very important to work out the answer to this question! It
> may be an unfortunate fact that there is just too much data and it can't
> be fit. Or can this be split across the CD set somehow, with CD #1 for
> new installs, and maybe CD#2 for upgrades, and CD#3 for packages needed by
> both? The complexity of this task makes me doubtful of a solution. What
> about multiple architectures?!
All CDs are "needed" for both new installs and upgrades. (That is, if you use
any packages from the 2nd/3rd CD at all; most people only use a few.) The
only stuff _not_ needed for upgrading is the installation system, which is
~50 MB and resides on CD#1.
It would be possible to make an "upgrade-only" CD set which doesn't contain
the installation system, but that wouldn't be more efficient since upgrading
still would need all three CDs of that "upgrade-only" set.
However, it is possible to upgrade using only the first CD, which contains the
most popular programs. This means that any less-popular programs that you're
using (that reside on CD#2 or #3) will _not_ be upgraded, but the old versions
will continue to work. Similarly, also upgrades using only CD#1 and #2 are
possible. You can even upgrade with CD#1 only at first, then later upgrade
with CD#2 and later with CD#3.
Finally (and this may be just what you're missing, experience with Red Hat?),
the upgrade of a Debian system is done in-place, while the system is running,
and quite possibly having users working on your system. You usually don't even
have to reboot.
> 2. If there is no way for a given architecture to have a suitable CD set
> for both upgrades and new installs, will Debian make two different
> official CD sets for that architecture, one for each purpose?
All current CD sets are suitable for both upgrades and installs, for every
architecture.
> 3. If there will be only one official CD set, will it be optimized for
> upgrades or new installs? Either way I think some people will be very
> unhappy. SOMEONE will have to change CDs a lot (probably newbies, since
> experienced users will know it is better to just copy all CDs to their
> hard drive).
See above. You do not (any more) have to swap CDs a lot, the newest version of
the `apt' tool handles this very efficiently. (And `apt' is used with both new
installs and upgrades.)
BTW, upgrade information is on
http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/~costar/potato/
Regards,
Anne Bezemer
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