On 29.10.11 22:44, Rick Moen wrote:
What you describe resulting from 'doing a daily upgrade to te latest Debian/testing' implies doing something like 'apt-get dist-upgrade',
Apropos upgrading for security, does anyone know whether letting that GUI "Update Manager" run will upset apt's view of the installed package base? (It seems rash to assume that they're necessarily compatible, after all, Network Manager stuffs up a variety of things.) Up to now, I've operated in paranoid mode, and used apt-get on packages listed under the Update Manager's "Important Security Updates" heading. (OK, yeah, mostly paranoid about unhelpful GUI app behaviour. Tardy package updating hasn't observably bitten me yet.) Just letting Update Manager rip would still involve deselecting several hundred non-security packages, each with a mouse-click, I see now. So an apt-get command option selecting only security updates would be the way to go, I figure. ...
By the way, if you have numerous Debian machines needing package updates, you do _not_ have them all fetch those in parallel. What you do is have each host's apt subsystem use a shared local Squid cache you establish for that purpose. That way, duplicate downloads are eliminated automatically.
That does sound easier than doing an "apt-get --download-only", sharing the archive via NFS (or sneakernet), and doing a "dpkg -i", but we often just end up doing what we remember how to do. Erik -- Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time. - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar