Howto: Upgrade Slackware 12.2 to 13.0

This will upgrade the default Slackware 12.2 install on Linode to Slackware 13. A fresh install is assumed. The entire process should take about 15 minutes or so.

Linode installs a limited set of packages. Here is a list of packages installed according to /var/log/packages, with links to the updated version. This can be put into a text file for wget to use. This mirror worked well.

http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/aaa_base-13.0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/aaa_elflibs-13.0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/aaa_terminfo-5.7-noarch-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/acl-2.2.47_1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/attr-2.4.43_1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/bash-3.1.017-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/bin-11.1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/bzip2-1.0.5-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/coreutils-7.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/curl-7.19.6-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/cxxlibs-6.0.10-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/dcron-2.3.3-i486-6.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/devs-2.3.1-noarch-25.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/dhcpcd-3.2.3-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/dialog-1.1_20080819-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/e2fsprogs-1.41.8-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/elvis-2.2_0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/etc-13.0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/gawk-3.1.6-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/gettext-0.17-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/glibc-2.9-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/glibc-i18n-2.9-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/glibc-solibs-2.9-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/glibc-zoneinfo-2.9-noarch-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/grep-2.5.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/gzip-1.3.12-i486-1.tgz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/iputils-s20070202-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/kbd-1.15-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/less-418-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/libidn-1.5-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/module-init-tools-3.6-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/ncurses-5.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/net-tools-1.60-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/network-scripts-13.0-noarch-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/openssh-5.2p1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/openssl-0.9.8k-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/openssl-solibs-0.9.8k-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/patch-2.5.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/pcre-7.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/pkgtools-13.0-noarch-3.tgz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/procps-3.2.7-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/readline-5.2-i486-4.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sed-4.1.5-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/shadow-4.0.3-i486-18.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sharutils-4.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sysvinit-2.86-i486-6.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sysvinit-functions-8.53-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sysvinit-scripts-1.2-noarch-30.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/tar-1.22-i486-2.tgz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/time-1.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/utempter-1.1.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/util-linux-ng-2.14.2-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/wget-1.11.4-i486-1.txz

I created a folder called "13update" in my home directory, and put the above in a text file called "packages.txt"

Run the command:````
wget -i packages.txt

When it's done, it should have downloaded 53 files, 39M.

You will also need these packages which are not installed on the default linode setup:

wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.txz
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/libcap-2.16-i486-2.txz
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/xz-4.999.8beta-i486-1.tgz
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/file-5.03-i486-1.txz
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/cyrus-sasl-2.1.23-i486-1.txz

findutils is required by upgradepkg, libcap is needed for the updated "ls" command, xz is needed for the new compression used in packages, cyrus-sasl is needed by curl.

The following steps install the updated package management tools as well as findutils to avoid errors with upgradepkg. (errors are not fatal but spurious files will not be deleted without this)

Run these commands in order, as root:

installpkg xz-4.999.8beta-i486-1.tgz
xz -d findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.txz
gzip findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.tar
mv findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.tar.gz findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.tgz
installpkg findutils.tgz upgradepkg pkgtools.tgz
upgradepkg tar.tgz installpkg file.txz
installpkg libcap*.txz

Use the following to go into single user mode. (This is recommended, but I actually tried this once in normal mode and didn't encounter any problems. )

telinit 1

log into your Lish as root, cd to the packages directory, and execute the following command:

upgradepkg *.txz
````

Note that some of these are already installed. It's fine, the package manager will ignore them automatically.

reboot

You will also notice in the /etc directory and some subdirectories, there are files with the .new extension, indicating they are updated. You may want to look through the changes and decide what you want to migrate. I recommend using the new DIR_COLORS and securetty, but the rest of the .new files look safe to ignore and delete.