Recently, I had to upgrade a Debian 4 (Etch) to Debian 5 (Lenny) at a client facility connected to Internet with a \u00ab\u00a0slow\u00a0\u00bb 2Mbps SDSL link.<\/p>\n
The problem is that downloading the packages while doing the upgrade on-site, during working hours, would take a significant time, and I had to minimize the downtime.<\/p>\n
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One solution would be to burn the 30 CDs, or 5 DVDs, from Debian, and upgrade the server from this pile of waffle.<\/p>\n
Finally, after googling for apt and offline upgrades, I found a solution that would fit quite perfectly my needs.<\/p>\n
The solution is to compute the set of packages required for the upgrade and pre-download them. Then, when on the client facility, I would just run `aptitude dist-upgrade’ and it would update from a local repository of theses pre-downloaded packages.<\/p>\n
Here are the commands I used :<\/p>\n
– Configure `\/etc\/apt\/sources.list’ to point to the Lenny repositories, then update the apt database :<\/p>\n
# aptitude clean\r\n# aptitude update<\/pre>\n– Compute the set of package required for the upgrade :<\/p>\n
# mkdir upgrade-mirror && cd upgrade-mirror\r\n# apt-get -qq --print-uris > pkg.list<\/pre>\n– Download the packages to the `upgrade-mirror’ subdir :<\/p>\n
# cat ..\/pkg.list |\u00a0(cd upgrade-mirror && while read URI; do wget \"$URI\"; done)\r\n# dpkg-scanpackages upgrade-mirror \/dev\/null |\u00a0gzip > upgrade-mirror\/Packages.gz<\/pre>\nAs I also needed PHP 5.3 from Zend Server, I also mirrored the Zend Server repo.<\/p>\n
I left the download running during the night.<\/p>\n
The download for the Lenny packages took about an hour (228MB of packages), plus another unknown time for the 415MB of the Zend Server mirror.<\/p>\n
Then, in the morning, I arrived at the client facility, and started my upgrade using theses local\/mirror repositories.<\/p>\n
– Set `\/etc\/apt\/sources.list’ to point to the `upgrade-mirror’ local repo, and to the classic `dist-upgrade’.<\/p>\n
– Set `\/etc\/apt\/sources.list’ to the official Lenny repo, and do a final `dist-upgrade’ to see if there is anything left to upgrade.<\/p>\n
In one hour I had the base system upgraded with full support for PHP 5.3, and I had plenty of time left for upgrading the client application.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, I had to upgrade a Debian 4 (Etch) to Debian 5 (Lenny) at a client facility connected to Internet with a \u00ab\u00a0slow\u00a0\u00bb 2Mbps SDSL link. The problem is that downloading the packages while doing the upgrade on-site, during working … Continuer la lecture