Etch back to Sarge

On Monday 30 April 2007 16:41, bigoperm wrote:
> I need to downgrade from Etch back to Sarge. The only resource I have is
> the original Sarge install CD. How can I use this CD to reinstall Sarge
> (over Etch) without using any data?

There is no (official) downgrade path, only upgrade.

> My intuition tells me all I need to do is skip the partition phase of the
> install, and things should be okay; however to do so requires that a root
> filesystem must be mounted. Is there a boot option I can pass to the
> installer to tell it to mount my already existing system? Thanks in
> advance.

You could install sarge into a partition that has etch and just don't format
it, I don't recommend that though. I think the best way is a good backup of
your data and a fresh install of sarge.

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On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 01:41:48AM +0200, bigoperm wrote:
>
> I need to downgrade from Etch back to Sarge. The only resource I have is
> the original Sarge install CD. How can I use this CD to reinstall Sarge
> (over Etch) without using any data?
>
> My intuition tells me all I need to do is skip the partition phase of the
> install, and things should be okay; however to do so requires that a root
> filesystem must be mounted. Is there a boot option I can pass to the
> installer to tell it to mount my already existing system? Thanks in advance.

Downgrading isn't supported.

Is that a typo: "without using any data" to be "without loosing any
data"?

You need backups of all your data.

Now for the obvious question: why do you feel the need to downgrade?

Doug.

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2007/5/1, bigoperm <bigoperm@yahoo.com>:
I need to downgrade from Etch back to Sarge. The only resource I have is the original Sarge install CD. How can I use this CD to reinstall Sarge (over Etch) without using any data?I did something very close to this using a local repository for apt, putted in the repository several stable packages (KDE packages, I was on testing and wanted to be closest as possible to stable cause KDE was giving me serious problem) and removed any reference to testing from
sources.listI then forced the installation of those packages using apt-get and dpkg, apt-get and the meeting of dependencies did the rest, downgrading packages in testing.This worked for me and surely a massive dist-downgrade will need more job but if you don't want to do a fresh install this could be a way to go.
regardsraffaele

bigoperm wrote:

>
> I need to downgrade from Etch back to Sarge. The only resource I have is
> the original Sarge install CD. How can I use this CD to reinstall Sarge
> (over Etch) without using any data?
>
> My intuition tells me all I need to do is skip the partition phase of the
> install, and things should be okay; however to do so requires that a root
> filesystem must be mounted. Is there a boot option I can pass to the
> installer to tell it to mount my already existing system? Thanks in
> advance.
>
>

My advice would be to backup data. And backup to whole of /etc

Then run the sarge install.

Choose to reformat all partitions apart from the /home partition if that is
where your data is.

(If you're running DB's or some email servers there may be data in /var).

Then carefully re-adding your users accounts -(using the uid switch to match
the /home directory if needed) should get you back to a sarge system.

Kevin

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