System Upgrade

[pavroo]

There is a new application ready in our repo called "System Upgrade" (sparky-aptus-upgrade).
It provides the recommended way for upgrading Sparky without answers for some questions.
There is only one question you have to answer: Upgrade now?
The app has the internet test check out built in - if you forget to make connection, it will display specific info.
Sparky APTus lets you make every step in your way - it's manual tool, but sparky-aptus-upgrade can do it automatically, similar like in others distributions.
But it's smaller and faster, with 'sparky touch'.

Test it and install. please, and report anything wrong you find.
I was testing and rebuilding it last few days, so it should working fine.
If everything will be OK, I'm gonna enclose it to the next sparky iso images.

Installation:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sparky-aptus-upgrade

Run it from Menu-> System-> System Upgrade

[way12go]

I'm using Sparkylinux JWM and I edited the jwmrc.xml file as follows... and it works. I even saved the root password in gnome-keyring with no password. I have to enter root password while I use terminal and in all other cases it's automated by keyring.

<Separator/>
<Program label="Task Manager" confirm="false">lxtask</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="Iceweasel" confirm="false">iceweasel</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="Chromium" confirm="false">chromium</Program>
<Program label="TOR Browser" confirm="false">start-tor-browser</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="Google Earth" confirm="false">googleearth %f</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="USB Image Writer" confirm="false">remsu mintstick -m iso</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="USB Stick Formatter" confirm="false">remsu mintstick -m format</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="System Upgrade" confirm="false">remsu aptus-upgrade</Program>
<Separator/>
<Program label="Google Chrome" confirm="false">google-chrome</Program>
<Separator/>

[way12go]

All I've is a small doubt.

Sometimes when I try to upgrade the downloading comes to a grinding halt then I press ctrl+c and enter the upgrade command again and this time it goes smoothly so what if this small app stops downloading and we can't even see what's going on.

[pavroo]

In a situation like that, apt tries to keep downloading for a while.
So you have to try again.
I will think about an extra pop up message.

[GeneC]

Hi pavroo... :D

I installed it but it wont launch? (from terminal)
(even as root).

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gene@sparky:~$ sparky-aptus-upgrade
bash: sparky-aptus-upgrade: command not found
gene@sparky:~$ sudo sparky-aptus-upgrade
[sudo] password for gene:
sudo: sparky-aptus-upgrade: command not found


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gene@sparky:~$ apt-cache policy sparky-aptus-upgrade
sparky-aptus-upgrade:
  Installed: 0.1.4
  Candidate: 0.1.4
  Version table:
*** 0.1.4 0
        500 http://sparkylinux.org/repo/ testing/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status


=====================

Edit:

OOPS... :-[

Nevermind.. It works....
Missed this.

Run it from Menu-> System-> System Upgrade

Yes, it runs from there just fine. (How do I launch from terminal...so I can see if there are any errors, et..?..)

EDIT2:.. ::)

Found it..

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gksu /usr/bin/aptus-upgrade

[pavroo]

@GeneC
Ooppss...

Found it..
gksu /usr/bin/aptus-upgrade

New version 0.1.5 is in our repo now. The binary file's name is the same as the 'deb' package.

@way12go
After upgrading change your JWM menu entry from 'aptus-upgrade' to 'sparky-aptus-upgrade'

[GeneC]

Nice..!!
Thanks... ;)

[pavroo]

There is a newer version of sparky-aptus-upgrade 0.1.6 ready to go.
I changed gui window for terminal on the main process (downloading and upgrading).
Sometimes it needs user reaction - gui doesn't provide it but a terminal does.
The second reason is the visible effect of the progress.

[way12go]

Pavroo is it possible for you to add this to the system upgrade app?

http://xmodulo.com/speed-slow-apt-get-install-debian-ubuntu.html

http://www.unixmen.com/how-to-find-fastest-official-mirror-lists-with-netselect-apt-on-debian/

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The fastest 10 servers seem to be:

http://mirror.0x.sg/debian/
http://kartolo.sby.datautama.net.id/debian/
http://shadow.ind.ntou.edu.tw/debian/
http://debian.xtdv.net/debian/
http://mirror.sov.uk.goscomb.net/debian/
http://mirror.vorboss.net/debian/
http://debian.xtdv.net/debian/
http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/debian/
http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/debian/
http://debian.mirrors.ovh.net/debian/

Of the hosts tested we choose the fastest valid for HTTP:
        http://mirror.0x.sg/debian/

Writing sources.list.
Done.


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# Debian packages for testing
deb http://mirror.0x.sg/debian/ testing main contrib
# Uncomment the deb-src line if you want 'apt-get source'
# to work with most packages.
# deb-src http://mirror.0x.sg/debian/ testing main contrib

# Security updates for stable
# deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib


Every time I do dist-upgrade [ update ] my system, the download is too slow and it even pauses forever. I had to close it multiple times and restart the script.

I've 15 MBps broadband connection but, the download speed of the update is sometimes few bytes/sec or upto 100kbps and on some ocasions for a very short span of time it shoots to 900kbps. I wish the apt-fast gets implemented.

Configure apt-fast

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure apt-fast

Thanks Pavroo.

[way12go]

I installed apt-fast and added 10 fastest mirrors for it and, I changed the single fastest mirror for sources.list

Here is the script as you suggested.

#!/bin/bash

testroot="`whoami`"

if [ "$testroot" != "root" ]; then
    echo "Must be root"
    exit 1
fi

apt-fast update && time apt-fast dist-upgrade -y && apt-fast install -f && apt-get autoremove -y && apt-get autoclean -y

Now the upgrade is amazingly faster and more efficient.

Thanks Pavroo.

[pavroo]

The idea is not bad, but are the mirrors official or 3th party?

[way12go]

I changed the mirror in source.list and also added all ten mirrors to the apt-fast app and dist-upgraded with no problems what so ever. Now that I already changed it on my desktop now, it's the turn of my laptop.

[way12go]

The list of ten mirrors is different when I tried on my laptop. Some of them are common to previous list. But, the main mirror is same for both the tests.

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http://mirror.0x.sg/debian/
http://kartolo.sby.datautama.net.id/debian/
http://debian.xtdv.net/debian/
http://debian.xtdv.net/debian/
http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/debian/
http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/debian/
http://mirror.i3d.net/pub/debian/
http://mirror.sov.uk.goscomb.net/debian/
http://mirror.vorboss.net/debian/
http://mirror.proserve.nl/debian/

[py-thon]

The fastest mirror is very much dependent on where you are and when you try. LMDE has a tool to check speed of servers and then set the fastest. But with LMDE that was simple because there are less than 20 mirrors at all. If you would check connection speed to all the Debian-mirrors https://www.debian.org/mirror/list you probably lose more time checking than you lose by not connecting to the fastest mirror.

I use http://ftp.debian.org (I think that was the setting when installing Sparky) and usually get an average of more than 200 kiB/s (not on some monitoring tool, but calculated dividing downloaded size by download time) with UMTS/HSDPA-modem simply using Synaptic.

[way12go]

After installing apt-fast and configuring the apt-fast ten mirrors and single mirror in source.list the dist-upgrade finishes in few seconds and this never happened before. Now the apt-fast doesn't use entire 15 MBps speed but it's more than sufficient. Now I remember that I need to increase the number of connections. I will do it. Thanks.