[daniel-thompson/pinebook-pro-debian-installer] Upgrade to Debian unstable?

[hibbelig]

I've installed Debian testing (bullseye) from Daniel Thompson's unofficial Debian installer:
https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pineb...-installer

Does it work to upgrade this to unstable?  I see the installer installs a Kernel from a "Debian_Testing" folder at the OpenSuse build service, and there is also a "Debian_Unstable" folder in the same location.  But I don't know whether this will be sufficient.

If it works to upgrade, how would I go about it?  Just the normal process of updating the sources list and then "apt full-upgrade"?  Or are there special steps?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I've installed Debian testing (bullseye) from Daniel Thompson's unofficial Debian installer:
https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pineb...-installer

Does it work to upgrade this to unstable?  I see the installer installs a Kernel from a "Debian_Testing" folder at the OpenSuse build service, and there is also a "Debian_Unstable" folder in the same location.  But I don't know whether this will be sufficient.

If it works to upgrade, how would I go about it?  Just the normal process of updating the sources list and then "apt full-upgrade"?  Or are there special steps?

I assume that this should work as expected. The kernel and headers would be excluded by a regular apt-get dist upgrade, after changing sources.list I think.

The best course would be to test this on a separate SD card, and then detail your experience for the community on Daniel's original thread. Then you could repro what works on your main install.

I'd do this myself, but I'm still anticipating delivery of my PBP!

[hibbelig]

I assume that this should work as expected. The kernel and headers would be excluded by a regular apt-get dist upgrade, after changing sources.list I think.

The best course would be to test this on a separate SD card, and then detail your experience for the community on Daniel's original thread. Then you could repro what works on your main install.

I've gone through the process and it worked nicely.

Because releases other than sid have "-proposed-updates" and "-security" and "-backports", but sid has none of these, I commented out those lines in "sources.list".  So the bottom line was that there are now only two active lines in my sources:

Code:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free
deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/danielthompson/Debian_Unstable ./

Of course, the first line was from "/etc/apt/sources.list" and the second line was from the extra file that Daniel's installer created.

"apt full-upgrade" wanted to update about 175 packages, it seemed to be fairly safe.  System is back running as normal.

Of course, I advise to make a backup, even though I didn't do that because there is no personal data on this thing -- I could just reinstall using Daniel's installer and I would lose very little.

---

Hm. I see that I do get some errors on upgrading packages:

Code:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64
find: ‘/lib/modules/5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64/kernel/arch/*/crypto’: No such file or directory
...

The second line is printed multiple times.

Not sure if it is relevant, but I thought to mention it.  @danielt what do you think?

[danielt]

Hm. I see that I do get some errors on upgrading packages:

Code:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64
find: ‘/lib/modules/5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64/kernel/arch/*/crypto’: No such file or directory
...

The second line is printed multiple times.

Not sure if it is relevant, but I thought to mention it.  @danielt what do you think?

Those errors are harmless (and occur on bullseye as well).

The crypto support in the custom kernel is built into the image but with a "real" Debian kernel they would be modules. I think some of the Debian LUKS support code automatically asks for the crypto modules in the initramfs (otherwise it would not be possible to encrypt the rootfs).

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I assume that this should work as expected. The kernel and headers would be excluded by a regular apt-get dist upgrade, after changing sources.list I think.

The best course would be to test this on a separate SD card, and then detail your experience for the community on Daniel's original thread. Then you could repro what works on your main install.

I've gone through the process and it worked nicely.

Because releases other than sid have "-proposed-updates" and "-security" and "-backports", but sid has none of these, I commented out those lines in "sources.list".  So the bottom line was that there are now only two active lines in my sources:

Code:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free
deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/danielthompson/Debian_Unstable ./

Of course, the first line was from "/etc/apt/sources.list" and the second line was from the extra file that Daniel's installer created.

"apt full-upgrade" wanted to update about 175 packages, it seemed to be fairly safe.  System is back running as normal.
< SNIP >

Fantastic! I'm glad this worked, as it ought to. I'm still awaiting my PBP delivery, so I've had to rely on what I read in these forums, along with my Debian/Ubuntu experience over the years.