[ale] slack rulez!!

[Byron A Jeff]

> 
> My problem with slack is trying to upgrade from 8.1 to 9.0.  I have
> found no upgrade option after booting to the new cd.  

The basic upgrade idea is to delete all the old packages and then install the
new ones. The CD has an UPGRADE.TXT document that describes the process.

> Do I have to dump my old install and install from scratch?

That's what I do. In fact I just installed Slack 9.0 on my primary home machine
last night.

However I prepare by separating the data of the machine from the OS. All of
the home and local directories reside in a separate partition that survives
reinstalls.

Usually I'll just back up /etc from the existing machine as a reference and
go to it.

The one thing I always do now is to spend the 20 minutes building a set of
custom install tagfiles the first time that I upgrade to a new Slack version.
It cuts down the time of every install by a significant amount because there
is absolutely no prompting once the install begins. You can do this by running
the maketag script in each of the package group directories and storing the
subsequently produced tagfiles (written to /var/log/setup/tmp) in a file called
tagfile in a directory that corresponds to the package group directory. Here's
a sample:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
root at upstairs:/local/packages/slackware-9.0# ls -lR
.:
total 56
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 May 21 19:12 a/
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 May 21 19:17 ap/
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 May 21 19:18 d/
...
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 May 21 19:25 xap/
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 May 21 19:25 y/

./a:
total 4
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          828 May 21 19:12 tagfile

./ap:
total 4
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          530 May 21 19:17 tagfile

./d:
total 4
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          394 May 21 19:18 tagfile

...

./xap:
total 4
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          349 May 21 19:25 tagfile

./y:
total 4
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           15 May 21 19:25 tagfile

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You can then use the 'tagfile path' installation option. Since my local 
partition survived, I put it there. But on a new installation you can load
it on a floppy and mount it.

Eventually I get around to creating a custom ISO image with my set of tagfiles
on it. Then you can choose the 'Custom tagfiles' option and not have to have
separate media.

In any case it's a real timesaver.

BAJ
_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale