Bug#818506: tone down warnings about GUI-based upgrades

[Antoine Beaupré]

Package: release-notes
Severity: wishlist

In the upgrade docs:

http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgrade-preparations

"The distribution upgrade should be done either locally from a
textmode virtual console (or a directly connected serial terminal), or
remotely via an ssh link."

While the first time I did a jessie upgrade, my X session exploded and
I was left with a half-upgraded system (recovered fine, however), now
I just upgraded a fairly regular laptop to the latest jessie release,
through a full gnome session, without any interruption or issues.

So I think that wording could be changed to a recommendation. It will
make upgrading Debian more accessible to users less familiar with the
"textmode virtual consoles" (which is, I suspect, a surprisingly large
proportion). :)

Thanks!

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.3
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'stable'), (500, 'oldstable'), (1, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.2.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

[Paul Gevers]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

Hi Antoine,

On Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:26:36 -0400 =?utf-8?q?Antoine_Beaupr=C3=A9?=

Post by Antoine Beaupré
http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgrade-preparations
"The distribution upgrade should be done either locally from a
textmode virtual console (or a directly connected serial terminal), or
remotely via an ssh link."

The source [1] used to say this:
TODO: surely gdm/kdm are sane?
(vorlon) haha, no, gdm is not; I had that thought, and tested a gdm
restart on my live session ;)

That note was from before 2008.

Post by Antoine Beaupré
While the first time I did a jessie upgrade, my X session exploded and
I was left with a half-upgraded system (recovered fine, however), now
I just upgraded a fairly regular laptop to the latest jessie release,
through a full gnome session, without any interruption or issues.
So I think that wording could be changed to a recommendation. It will
make upgrading Debian more accessible to users less familiar with the
"textmode virtual consoles" (which is, I suspect, a surprisingly large
proportion). :)

Is one experience enough to say this? Is the remark from 2008 still a
thing? I don't know how to judge. I would expect that a lot has improved
in this area over the last decade.

Paul

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/ddp-team/release-notes/commit/9292bbf

[Antoine Beaupré]

Control: tags -1 -moreinfo

Post by Paul Gevers
Control: tags -1 moreinfo
Hi Antoine,
On Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:26:36 -0400 =?utf-8?q?Antoine_Beaupr=C3=A9?=

Post by Antoine Beaupré
http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgrade-preparations
"The distribution upgrade should be done either locally from a
textmode virtual console (or a directly connected serial terminal), or
remotely via an ssh link."

TODO: surely gdm/kdm are sane?
(vorlon) haha, no, gdm is not; I had that thought, and tested a gdm
restart on my live session ;)
That note was from before 2008.

That is a long time ago.

Post by Paul Gevers

Post by Antoine Beaupré
While the first time I did a jessie upgrade, my X session exploded and
I was left with a half-upgraded system (recovered fine, however), now
I just upgraded a fairly regular laptop to the latest jessie release,
through a full gnome session, without any interruption or issues.
So I think that wording could be changed to a recommendation. It will
make upgrading Debian more accessible to users less familiar with the
"textmode virtual consoles" (which is, I suspect, a surprisingly large
proportion). :)

Is one experience enough to say this? Is the remark from 2008 still a
thing? I don't know how to judge. I would expect that a lot has improved
in this area over the last decade.

I also expect that as well.

I don't know what the treshold should be, but for me if X crashes during
upgrades, that's a bug that should be fixed in X or whatever crashes it,
not something that should just be mentioned in passing in the release
notes.

So I'm tempted to say we should just remove this and stop pretending
that's okay. If that's still a problem, we need to fix it, not just say
"oops we did it again" in the relnotes. ;)

A.

[Paul Gevers]

Hi,

Post by Antoine Beaupré
I don't know what the treshold should be, but for me if X crashes during
upgrades, that's a bug that should be fixed in X or whatever crashes it,
not something that should just be mentioned in passing in the release
notes.
So I'm tempted to say we should just remove this and stop pretending
that's okay. If that's still a problem, we need to fix it, not just say
"oops we did it again" in the relnotes. ;)

And how about remote updates? Are the notes about VPN, telnet, rlogin,
and rsh still valid? I would apply the same logic here.

Paul

[Antoine Beaupré]

Post by Paul Gevers
Hi,

Post by Antoine Beaupré
I don't know what the treshold should be, but for me if X crashes during
upgrades, that's a bug that should be fixed in X or whatever crashes it,
not something that should just be mentioned in passing in the release
notes.
So I'm tempted to say we should just remove this and stop pretending
that's okay. If that's still a problem, we need to fix it, not just say
"oops we did it again" in the relnotes. ;)

And how about remote updates? Are the notes about VPN, telnet, rlogin,
and rsh still valid? I would apply the same logic here.

VPN I don't know, but I would definitely ditch anything mentioning
telne, rlogin or rsh, really. :)

A.

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Post by Paul Gevers
tags -1 moreinfo

Bug #818506 [release-notes] tone down warnings about GUI-based upgrades
Added tag(s) moreinfo.

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Post by Antoine Beaupré
tags -1 -moreinfo

Bug #818506 [release-notes] tone down warnings about GUI-based upgrades
Removed tag(s) moreinfo.

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Fri, 22 Mar 2019 21:54:06 +0100
with message-id <4d4e0bf6-9b57-e80f-c0e8-***@debian.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#818506: tone down warnings about GUI-based upgrades
has caused the Debian Bug report #818506,
regarding tone down warnings about GUI-based upgrades
to be marked as done.

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