How often to update?

[Duncan Gibson]

Auke Kok wrote:
> What's your [update] strategy?

I installed a basic Lunar in August/September and have spent the time
since then in slowly expanding what's on there. As a Lunar newbie, it
took me a long time to get a 2.6 kernel built and configured to support
my wifi card, so I was a bit wary about running the upgrade in case I
broke something.

For my newbie's installation experience so far see:
http://wiki.lunar-linux.org/index.php/User_talk:Engelsman

Last night I decided that my system was pretty bare anyway, so I had
nothing to lose, and go for it anyway. But where to start? Which are
the critical apps that you need to take care of first, and which can
you just set running? I should have asked on #lunar, but I wanted to
at least try first. So following the examples in 'man lfirsttime':

	lin moonbase
	lin lunar
	lin -cr gcc glibc gcc bash coreutils tar wget

These all appeared to run without probs, although there was a message
about installing 2.4 kernel includes while running a 2.6 kernel, but
man/groff started to complain about incorrect shared libraries :-(

I should have stopped here and investigated, but it was midnight, and
so I decided to bite the bullet, hoping that a complete 'lunar update'
would get everything back on track again.

The updated downloaded moonbase again, then lunar (which tells you to
restart your shell to pick up the changes in the environment, but this
was in mid-update. I hoped that it already had the changes after logging
in again after the previous 'lin lunar'). It went on to 'db' and then
other things, and I left it compiling 'pango' to go to bed.

Went in this morning to find that four modules had failed:

	ncurses, Python, oprofile and Python[yes, again!]

Rebooted the machine out of curiosity. [Danger! Will Robinson]

Big mistake! It's lost my wifi settings somewhere, so no network!

Now it will have to wait until Saturday when I have time to work out
what is wrong, and/or move the system downstairs so I can connect a
cable between the original NIC and the router.

I'm hoping it's just a kernel rebuild to specify the correct options
and modules for the wifi...

So the moral of the story:
Think! before you bite the bullet: sometimes the bullet bites back!

Cheers
Duncan [aka engelsman]

"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything"
"The man who makes no mistakes takes orders from one who does"