cluster

[Thomas Lange]

Hi Shashi,

if you only want to upgrade and do not make a complete new
installation, you can use apt-get dist-upgrade. In fai there's
following trick to answer all questions:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND=Noninteractive
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND

then

apt-get -f -y dist-upgrade </dev/null

or 

yes 'n' | apt-get -f -y dist-upgrade


But there are some packages, where the postinst script goes into a
loop, when the questions are answered with n<Return> or only <Return>.
This is from fai:

The installation of packages (without interaction) depends on the
success of apt-get (using dpkg). But some packages are broken and an
error occurs during installation. Some workarounds are made in rcS_fai
in the subsourine prepare_apt. Most problems occur if postinst script
has a loop, when all questions are answered with <Return> or
n<Return>.

Following table describes the problems with postinstall script.

INPUT is what is typed to all questions of the postinstall script.
The value of the cossespondening column means:

L = script go into a loop (will ask forever)
O = OK (script finishes successfully)


                        I N P U T

package name |Return|  N  |  Y  |     |     | Comments
-------------------------------------------------------
libpaperg    |      |  L  |  L  |     |     |
dump         |  O   |  O  |  O  |     |     |
ingerman     |  O   |  L  |  L  |     |     |
xserver-svga |  L   |  O  |  L  |     |     |
nis          |  O   |     |     |     |     |
ntp          |      |  O  |     |     |     | nedds a /etc/ntp.conf
             |      |     |     |     |     |
cslatex      |  O   |  L  |     |     |     | calls initex which needs <CR>
             |      |     |     |     |     |


Following packages are know to have errors:

libpaperg    (divert error in version -12), loop if input is not a valid papersize 
xf86setup
xserver-svga (does not like n<Return>)
ntp          (does not like n<Return>)
telnetd      must installed before nis (adduser hangs ?)
gcc          causes dpkg to segfault sometimes depending on packagelist
ssmtp        hostname --fqdn breaks in chroot environment



I would recommend to test the upgrade with "</dev/null" on one node of
the cluster. If all went right, you can use it for your whole
cluster. But maybe you want to change several things when using 2.2,
so a new installation (or reinstallation) with fai will be also a good
choice.

regards 
-- 
 Thomas
----------------------------------------------------------------------
            Thomas Lange
Institut fuer Informatik        mailto:lange at informatik.Uni-Koeln.DE
   Universitaet zu Koeln
            Pohligstr. 1        Telefon: +49 221 470 5303
             50969 Koeln        Fax    : +49 221 470 5317
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