Re: Despatch of frozen 'potato'. [long]

[Prabhu Ramachandran <prabhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hi,

	Here is what has happened so far.  It is a long story. 

	Debian now is packaged in 4 CD's (just binaries).  So newbies,
dont try to install using dselect unless you have LOADS of time or are
crazy. 

	Originally, I was planning to download the first binary CD and try
to use it.  If necessary I would get the 2nd CD.  In the meanwhile
Ramakrishnan told me that someone he knew had downloaded CD#1 and #2.
Since I didnt want to waste b/w I asked him to mail the cd's to me.  Since
I had saved on b/w I requested Prof. Sriram to get CD#3 and 4 to make a
complete set.  As usual Prof. Sriram readily agreed and obtained them in
no time.  I mailed these CD's to Ragoo.  Now here comes the sad part.  The
date for cd#3 and 4 was April 16 2000.  Unfortunately the date for the CD1
was March 24 and the date for cd2 was march 27th.  Once I received the
cd's from Ragoo (this thursday) I tried to upgrade using dselect.  However
dselect bombed since the Packages.cd in cd4 reffered to a later version of
ld.so than cd#1 had.  I then tried the cd#2.  here too the version of
ld.so was newer than what cd1 had.  Even if the CD#1 and #2 had the same
date stamp i could have managed an update but with even 1 and 2 being
inconsistent I simply couldnt upgrade _anything_ I could have done it by
hand but I wasnt crazy enough to mess with my production machine.

	However all was not lost.  We did have a large volume of nice
packages that were recent.  Only a few packages, the important ones needed
updation.  Since debian is what it is, there exists a soluiton for our
problem.  So in desperation I pestered Prof. Sriram and spent almost two
whole days figuring out and updating the CD's using the amazing
pseudo-image kit + rsync. I am not going into the details but this enables
one to update only the required packages and minimizes bandwidth.  I used
all the four cd images that we had.

	In any case I now am making images that are upto date as of today. 
The packages on the cd are unlikely to change even when potato is
released.  Please dont ask me for CD's in the next few days.  I will get
my personal copy only on monday or so.  After which I will test them and
then possibly copy them. Id appreciate if someone else (apart from Prof. 
Sriram) also took up copying CD images for Debianers here. I will get a
personal copy and I can make one another copy if someone gives me the
media. 

	In any case, my sincere thanks to Prof. Sriram for bearing up with
me and helping me out.  Thanks also to Ramakrishnan and Ragoo for the cd's
that they sent and to the pseudo-image kit and rsync folks. :)

prabhu

On Sat, 6 May 2000, Raghavendra Bhat wrote:

> Prabhu...have U received the CDs ?  Mail sent to aero is
> bouncing/getting delayed.  By which courier have U 
> despatched CDs #3 and 4 ?  What is causing the delay ?

---
Send e-mail to 'ilugc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' with 'unsubscribe' 
in either the subject or the body to unsubscribe from this list.