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Gustavo Carreno
Asked: 2010-01-28 09:07:06 +0800 CST

Upgrading Slackware 12.2 to 13.0, any gotchas?

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I'm gradually upgrading a Slackware 12.0 to a 13.0.
Using slapt-get I've done it gradually, just in case. So I've done 12.0 -> 12.1, 12.1 -> 12.2.

I've sorted out that I need to manually upgrade pkgtools and fresh install xz just to get it to install the new package format.

After Googling for the subject I've stumbled upon someone that did a kernel upgrade from 12.1 to 13.0 and he's complaining about /dev/hda being switched to /dev/sda.

Is this correct and I'll have to boot from a 13.0 CD to get LILO working or can I just run LILO after slapt-get finishes the dist-upgrade?

linux upgrade slackware

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Using slapt-get I've done it gradually, just in case. So I've done 12.0 -> 12.1, 12.1 -> 12.2.

    slapt-get is not officially supported, it is a third party tool. If you use it, complain to its developers. Canonical Slackware users do not use third-party tools for upgrading. They use their brain. When a new Slackware version is released, it contains an UPGRADE.TXT file. Those are high-quality instructions for manual upgrade. Follow them and do the upgrade by hand, do not let a third party tool screw up your system.

    After Googling for the subject I've stumbled upon someone that did a kernel upgrade from 12.1 to 13.0 and he's complaining about /dev/hda being switched to /dev/sda.

    linuxquestions.org is a place for newbies. Do not blindly take their word for everything. Read the official Slackware docs. A Slackware 13.0 default kernel works fine with /dev/hda names. I can vouch for that because I'm running Slackware 13.0 on a computer that has an IDE drive. The transition to /dev/sda* is made only in Slackware-current, which is not Slackware 13.0. Relevant quote from the ChangeLog:

    +--------------------------+
Mon Jan  4 21:43:02 UTC 2010
New kernels...  and this deserves a mention/warning:  the last bits of the
"old" IDE/ATA system have been removed now.  Everything should be using
the libata based drivers now, so if you have any drives that are currently
running as /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, etc., when you reboot with these kernels all
drives will be renamed as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.  If you had any /dev/sd*
already, they might get renamed.  Adjustments may be required in
/etc/lilo.conf, /etc/fstab, the initrd, and elsewhere.  Good luck!

    Again, this is not 13.0, this is the bleeding-edge -current, which you wouldn't want to have running on your server anyway. -current is for testing purposes, it's being polished until it becomes stable and usable.

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  2. I think it's better to make a clean install of any new Slackware. Yes it's possible to upgrade manual but there is a chance you screw up your system bad. For me it's better as I've separated my partitions and my software is located on a different partition from the system's partition.
    If you chose to go with manual upgrade read the "UPGRADE.TXT" and follow the directions carefully !!

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