One of the things I’ve enjoyed about Slackware has been the upgrades I’ve done. I have not needed to do a clean install and I have felt fully in control during the upgrade process. Pat Volkerding includes a file on the first cdrom called UPGRADE.TXT. That file has the process from step 0 to 9.

First make a complete copy of my system on another partition. I fix /etc/fstab on the new partition and I edit /etc/lilo.conf to include both the copy and the original systems. Then I double check by booting the copy, bring up my user, try going online. If all is well, I begin the upgrade.

The basics are to go into single-user mode and then upgrade things in the order that he gives. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. This time I got down to where he recommends removing the extra language packages for kde and koffice and I realized I had none of them installed. That was because I forgot to mount the second cdrom and upgrade the kde and gnome packages. He did not specify that in the instructions and I did not do it. So be sure you get those as well.

He gives a little script for taking care of the config files. There are some new config files in /etc. I did not run the script. I found 6 .new files and did diff on the .new and the old to see what had changed. Files like shadow, passwd, and group did not have my users information in them, but had no other changes; so I just left mine in place. The other 3 were files that I had never edited. I moved them to .bak files and moved the .new files in place.

I edited lilo.conf (previous edit was on the old system, you will recall) after mounting the old partition so that I could include the capability of booting to it if need be. I of course included the upgraded system with a new label and ran /sbin/lilo to install that in the MBR. Then I rebooted and all was well except…

When I did the upgrade I saw that CUPS was installed. I remembered that previously the printer did not work after I did a security upgrade that included CUPS. So, I tried the printer and sure enough it did not work. I uninstalled CUPS, and restarted lprng, but still nothing. Trying ‘lpr filename’ gave me the message that lpr didn’t exist. I checked /usr/bin/lpr and it was a link to nowhere–supposed to be to lpr-cups. So back to the cdrom to install cups…tgz, because there was no lprng package on the cdrom.

After reinstalling CUPS, I used mutt to look at root mail and sure enough there was a nice email from Pat with info on printer installation. Previously I had used apsfilter which he recommended, but he indicated that lprng is ancient history now. CUPS is in. He told me to go to localhost:631/admin with my browser and what do you know, after logging in as root, I had a nice interface to configure my printer. That was easy to do and now I think I’m all set. I have sound, internet and printing; so I think it is in good shape.

1. Bluefish wouldn’t run because of the python they have incorporated. Had to recompile bluefish.
2. Moneydance wouldn’t run. Had to change a symlink for the java.
3. Zire 31 wouldn’t sync. Had to edit visor.h and recompile the module. This has been true for every palm and every kernel so far. They use a different ID number for the Zire 31 than for other Zire’s apparently.