Release Notes for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny), Intel x86

The Debian Documentation Project

This document is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

The license text can also be found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html and /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 on Debian GNU/Linux.

2009-02-14


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1. Reporting bugs on this document
1.2. Contributing upgrade reports
1.3. Sources for this document
2. What's new in Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
2.1. What's new in the distribution?
2.1.1. Package management
2.1.2. The proposed-updates section
2.2. System improvements
2.3. Debian Live
2.4. Major kernel-related changes
2.4.1. Changes in kernel packaging
2.5. Emdebian 1.0 (based on Debian GNU/Linux lenny 5.0)
2.6. Netbook support
2.7. Java now in Debian
3. Installation System
3.1. What's new in the installation system?
3.1.1. Major changes
3.1.2. Automated installation
4. Upgrades from previous releases
4.1. Preparing for the upgrade
4.1.1. Back up any data or configuration information
4.1.2. Inform users in advance
4.1.3. Prepare for recovery
4.1.4. Prepare a safe environment for the upgrade
4.1.5. Prepare initramfs for LILO
4.2. Checking system status
4.2.1. Review actions pending in package manager
4.2.2. Disabling APT pinning
4.2.3. Checking packages status
4.2.4. The proposed-updates section
4.2.5. Unofficial sources and backports
4.3. Manually unmarking packages
4.4. Preparing sources for APT
4.4.1. Adding APT Internet sources
4.4.2. Adding APT sources for a local mirror
4.4.3. Adding APT source from CD-ROM or DVD
4.5. Upgrading packages
4.5.1. Recording the session
4.5.2. Updating the package list
4.5.3. Make sure you have sufficient space for the upgrade
4.5.4. Upgrade apt and/or aptitude first
4.5.5. Using aptitude's list of automatically-installed packages with apt
4.5.6. Minimal system upgrade
4.5.7. Upgrading the rest of the system
4.5.8. Possible issues during upgrade
4.6. Upgrading your kernel and related packages
4.6.1. Installing the kernel metapackage
4.6.2. Device enumeration reordering
4.6.3. Boot timing issues
4.7. Things to do before rebooting
4.7.1. Rerun lilo
4.8. System boot hangs on Waiting for root file system
4.8.1. How to avoid the problem before upgrading
4.8.2. How to recover from the problem after the upgrade
4.9. Preparing for the next release
4.10. Obsolete packages
4.10.1. Dummy packages
5. Issues to be aware of for lenny
5.1. Potential problems
5.1.1. Problems with devices related to udev
5.1.2. Some applications may no longer work with a 2.4 kernel
5.1.3. Certain network sites cannot be reached by TCP
5.1.4. Automatic poweroff stops working
5.1.5. Asynchronous network initialization may cause unpredictable behavior
5.1.6. Trouble when using WPA secured wireless networks
5.1.7. Problems with non-ASCII characters in filenames
5.1.8. Sound stops working
5.2. NFS mounts now handled by nfs-common
5.3. Change of Romanian (ro) keyboard layout
5.4. Upgrading apache2
5.5. NIS and Network Manager
5.6. Security status of Mozilla products
5.7. Security status of OCS Inventory and SQL-Ledger
5.8. KDE desktop
5.9. GNOME desktop changes and support
5.10. No default support for Unicode in emacs21*
5.11. slurpd/replica will no longer work
5.12. Desktop not using full screen
5.13. DHCP failover issue
5.14. VServer Disk Limit
6. More information on Debian GNU/Linux
6.1. Further reading
6.2. Getting help
6.2.1. Mailing lists
6.2.2. Internet Relay Chat
6.3. Reporting bugs
6.4. Contributing to Debian
A. Managing your etch system
A.1. Upgrading your etch system
A.2. Checking your sources list
B. Contributors to the Release Notes
C. Lenny dedicated to Thiemo Seufer
Index
Glossary