7 July , Sparky upgrade. Stretch > Buster in my way ...

[penguin]

Hi all.
Neglecting all my previous upgrades test from Stretch to Buster , today I am trying mo mentally to upgrade from Stretch to Buster. Personally I have 3 laptops where Sparky Linux is installed. Recommendations.

Backup Sparky Linux  if something going wrong you can go back !!!

1 - If you have Sparky Linux and another Linux installed in your laptop , open the other Linux and backup your Sparky with qt4-fsarchiver or gnome disk utility or whatever you prefer.
2- If you have Windows and Sparky installed in the same laptop I will recommend to use free utility to backup Sparky partition or Drive Snapshot from Windows.


For folks using xfce desktop , see this article

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https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu

3- Copy two files (in usb stick or somewhere), that maybe you will need later.
xfce-applications.menu that resides to home/user/.config/menus ( in my case /home/penguin/.config/menus/)
and
xfce-applications.menu that resides to etc/xdg/menus/


Based on today pavro's post

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https://sparkylinux.org/sparky-4-transition/

For folks that want to upgrade directly go to this part of the post.

If you would like to upgrade Sparky 4 to Sparky 5 – it is possible, but I recommend to make fresh Sparky 5 installation.
By the way, if you decide to make such upgrade, do:
1. Change Debian repos from 'stretch' to 'buster' or keep 'stable' at the /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Install the latest version of 'sparky5-apt' package which has to remove 'sparky4-apt':

sudo apt update
sudo apt install sparky-apt sparky5-apt

3. Then upgrade the system:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

If any problem:

sudo apt install -f

A good article to read.

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https://www.linuxbabe.com/debian/upgrade-debian-9-stretch-to-debian-10-buster

( Personally I use Intel graphic and not Nvidia also that my laptop has Nvidia card)

So... First. Deactivate from repositories ...

deb https://sparkylinux.org/repo oldstable main
deb-src https://sparkylinux.org/repo oldstable main

This should be done first because if these repo are active you will get error if apply the follow command

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sudo apt install sparky-apt sparky5-apt

Deactivate also other repositories (you can activate them later) . Pay attention especially with some old remain repo from the past. If you are not sure what to do with them, simply deactivate . I have experimented a lot before with Sparky and now I noticed that still same Sid , Wheezy other repos are resided in me repo list but not active.

You can do it this job ( de activate) entering (by) Synaptic.

But if you want to do automatically change from stretch to buster, you can do in terminal as follow :

sudo sed -i 's/stretch/buster/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

Starting upgrade process.

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sudo apt update

and

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sudo apt install sparky-apt sparky5-apt

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sudo apt update

and

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sudo apt full-upgrade
...............................

All packages are downloaded . Read some lines of information on the scree (what are offered in the new package and what changes or bugs ), up to the line when you will see press q to continue. Press q to continue.


Now... step by step . My way of upgrading


Samba Network ( dialog box asking Yes or No ) . I  choose No ( for changing of smb.conf)

Configuration file '/etc/bash.bashrc' (asking what to do) . You can examine the situation by pressing Z or see differences by pressing D ( I pressed D and copied the differences in leafpad simply by copy and paste to have it for later). I chose N as default.

Configuration file '/etc/mime.types'
==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
   What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
    Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
    N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
      D     : show the differences between the versions
      Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** mime.types (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? I chose N ( keep the current ...)

Continuously , I chose N for all, keeping my default installation.

Cleaning of system

sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt clean

Done.