Upgrading to Slackware -current

I do not use -current, but since Slackware 14.0 is just around the corner I need to test my SlackBuilds on it. So, I booted my Slackware64 13.37 DVD and did a direct netinstall of -current on my desktop PC. All went flawlessly and the system is very stable. It was more tricky to install slackware32 -current in a virtual machine, where I check how my SlackBuilds work on the 32bit architecture. I tried the netinstall approach, but the network somehow stops from time to time in the guest machine. Very, very annoying — especially when doing an installation.

So, I installed a very minimal Slackware32 13.37 — just the A, AP, L and N series. After a reboot, I uncommented a -current mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and tried to search LQ for a good way of doing the upgrade. After viewing several posts, I finally came across a small tutorial by AlienBob. So in the end I did the following for my particular case:

slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade glibc
slackpkg upgrade findutils pkgtools slackpkg tar xz
slackpkg update | slackpkg was upgraded, so do this
slackpkg install a ap l n | install new from the A, AP, L and N series
slackpkg upgrade-all | I unselected kernel-*
slackpkg download kernel | the new versions will be in /var/cache/packages/slackware/a

Now install the -current kernel-* alongside the old one. The kernel source got downloaded, too.
cd /var/cache/packages/slackware/a
installpkg *.txz | only the kernel-* were there
nano /etc/lilo.conf | edit to have both versions of the kernel
lilo -v
REBOOT!

It boots fine, so time to:
slackpkg clean-system | remove the unneeded
REBOOT again
slackpkg install d e k t tcl x xap xfce | install the rest of the system

Edit again lilo to remove the old kernel entry and run:
lilo -v

That’s it!

About these ads