[mythtv-users] apt-get upgrade = borked mythtv

[chris at cpr.homelinux.net]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2005 at 08:08:08PM -0500, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> >Hello.  I did an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade today and now my
> >system is borked.

I'd love to know the etymology of that word.  Wikipedia says "possibly" 
related to the Swedish Chef (which was the first thing I thought of), 
although it could be an homage to the failed nomination of Robert Bork 
to the US Supreme Court.

> Word to the wise (and I'm sure this doesn't help you much now), but I 
> think you're much better off keeping to the "if it ain't broke dont' fix 
> it" philosophy with the underlying components that MythTV relies on such 
> as the OS, QT, drivers, etc.  Unless you had some reason to upgrade 
> every component in your system at once, I'd say, leave well enough alone.

Debian recently switched from XFree86 to XOrg.  I updated one of my 
front-end machines and it was such a hassle I left the other one alone. 
The problem is pretty deep in the lib dependencies - to get from one 
version of X to the other basically required uninstalling MythTV and 
then reinstalling again.

FWIW, I *never* *EVER* do "apt-get upgrade".  It's just too dangerous 
to allow an automated tool make that many changes without knowing in 
advance what's going to happen.  As maligned as it is, I prefer to use 
dselect to view the impact of upgrades so I can hold back changes that 
would cause applications to be uninstalled due to missing dependencies 
(which often happens on testing/unstable because the apps and libraries 
don't get committed together).  I still use apt-get to install 
individual packages.

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