I posted the headaches I've been through this weekend at the tail end of another thread:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3055
I realized that since that thread is solved, chances are, few if any will read my tacked-on-the-end posts. So I'll start a new thread.

Basically, I nuked my MEPIS 8.5 system when I foolishly decided to try upgrading from Lenny repos to Testing repos. Not a problem for those with knowledge, perhaps; but I tend to wade into things that are over my head.

Anyway, couldn't boot after installing Testing. Hours of frustration trying to figure-out what happened. Re-installing MEPIS 8.5 worked, sort-of. Then I got stupid again, and tried updating to Stable. I figured the problem might have been updating two levels (Lenny to Wheezy). Well, one level was enough, and I was back to a non-bootable (to X, anyway) system.

Using a spare computer to search through forums, I noticed mention of problems with"libc6" updgrades, for various distros. Each time I tried upgrading through apt-get, I encountered messages telling me I needed to manually stop xdm or kdm (might not have those spelled right) and a bunch of other stuff; in connection with libc and/or glibc.

This may or may not be the only problem. Rokytnji identified a problem in the thread linked-to above, which had to do with separate root and home partitions; which I tend to use. See the thread linked-to above for details. It gets solved by using UUID (whatever that is) labels for drives, rather than /dev/sda1-type labelling - both in Grub and /etc/fstab.

Anyway, I can now boot into X; after modifying menu.lst and /ect/fstab with the UUID stuff. But I'm still scared to do a full apt-get dist-upgrade! I have done so probably half-a-dozen times this weekend, and each time I end up with either total inability to boot (if I installed Grub to root) or command-line-only (if I installed Grub to the MBR or whatever it's called).

I don't really understand all the various posts about libc6; but I'm pretty sure it's involved.

Any and all thoughts on this pesky dilemma are most welcome!

Chris

Are you using antiX-M8.5?

If so it might be better to download the rc version of M11 here:


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.mepisimo.com/antix/Released/"
linktext was:"http://www.mepisimo.com/antix/Released/"
====================================

Hi Anti! Yep, running 8.5. Because I tend to break things while mucking about in ignorance, I thought I'd wait until version 11 has all the bugs worked-out in the final version. Would you say it's close enough? If so, I'll try it.

Thank you!
Chris

Do you have nvidia driver?

If so maybe wait, or read the latest announcement for applying a patch to that rc iso file.

If you have something else, then the iso should work just fine. The bugs are mainly to do with running live or using nvidia.

Uh... I don't know if I have the nvidia driver. I might. One of the many things I messed-about with this weekend was Xorg.conf. I broke it at one point, and got it working again by commenting out a bunch of nvidia stuff. Not sure that really indicates much.

I think I may play it safe, and run this very basic antiX 8.5 installation which I'm now working with; until antiX 11 final hits the mirrors. I'm all out of time for this weekend, and can't afford to bumble my way into another mess; as I need a functioning computer for one of my jobs.

BTW, this all started because I have been pondering for some time how to"synchronize" (so to speak) my desktops and netbook. I was running MEPIS on the desktops, and love it; but as it used older debian repos, the software was dated compared to my netbook. I wanted to be able to easily move back and forth between computers for work.

My goal is to have all computers running antiX, with an LXDE desktop. I know LXDE isn't preferred by the community; but I kinda like it. Anyway, my point is: I pondered for quite awhile which distro I would"commit" to on all machines. In the end, I had to conclude that antiX was the way to go. I've tried a number of distros; and they're all good. For me, antiX offers the things that matter to me: light-on-resources, full-featured, and easy enough for a perpetual noob like me to use (with a little help from the forums...)

griennehornette