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Upgrading Slackware to a New Release
I always use slackpkg (with care) to upgrade my Slackware system. In case you had my versions okf KDE4 packages installed and blacklisted them in “/etc/slackpkg/blacklist” you will first have to remove or comment out the line “[0-9]+alien” so that slackpkg can upgrade my packages with the official Slackware versions.
The following steps should work for all situations:
Blacklist the following packages in “/etc/slack/pkg/blacklist”:
kernel-generic kernel-generic-smp kernel-huge kernel-huge-smp kernel-modules kernel-modules-smp
If new kernels have been added, then “installpkg” those new kernel packages first (do not use “upgradepkg”). Update your “/etc/lilo.conf” with the new kernel (don't remove your running kernel!) and run “lilo”. You should always be able to boot back into a previous kernel in case the new Slackware kernel gives you a hard time.
# slackpkg update
Now that slackpkg has updated its internal database we can let it update the computer with the current state of affairs.
# slackpkg install-new # slackpkg upgrade-all # slackpkg clean-system
The first of those three commands (install-new) will install every package which is listed in the ChangeLog.txt file as “Added:” It will not install any other packages, for instance if you did not have KDE installed before, this command will not add KDE packages to your computer all of a sudden.
The third commmand (clean-system) will show you an overview of all packages which are not part of Slackware Linux at this moment. That means, the list will show any package which has been removed from Slackware like kdeaccessibility, kdebase, etccetera. It will also show you every 3rd party package which you have installed! So, use this command wisely. De-select every package which you want to keep (i.e. all 3rd party packages) and then click “OK” to let slackpkg remove all obsolete packages.
This is the easiest way to get “current” again, it is also the proper way to upgrade between two adjacent stable Slackware releases.
You can trust slackpkg to do it safely, but it will need your brains and care.
Sources
- Originally written by Eric Hameleers