I wanted to see if any of you guys have had to deal with this. I operate well over half a dozen Debian systems. They are not all set up identically when it comes to their source list file. All of these Debian systems have been operating smoothly for well over a year and all have updated fine until this last image update release. Let me paste in what I have found as what appears the culprit source from my source list: #deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free (I added the # to remove this source going forward) Most of my Debian systems both bare metal and VM do not have this source anywhere in their list files. I can't remember why I added it at one point. It was to update something I use but I don't remember what it is. Anyway, I am running this VM on two separate computers and have been for over a year. All was well with updates on both machines. Using apt-get and doing updates with the above pasted source "in play" causes a horrifically large update (about a Gig). Even after performing this update multiple times on both machines it fails to launch after completion. The video drivers from VirtualBox are not launched etc..... After some trial and error I examined the source list against the source list of my other Debian systems. Seeing this source was not being used on them I used the # to remove its updates. Fortunately I created a snapshot before the update and returned the VM to that snapshot. Both update perfectly now with something along the order of 60 meg via apt-get. Any ideas for what could cause virtual machines that run great for a year to look for a + Gig update to be called? Strangest thing!
I didn't see any offer of an upgrade but when you run sudo it just runs the shell script. Maybe I'll edit the shell script later to just upgrade and not dist-upgrade. Example currently being used pasted below: #! /bin/sh sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get autoremove read -p "*** press Enter to close this terminal ***" nothing Strangely, however even after running and updating it wasn't loading any VirtualBox drivers, etc... Now you have me wondering so I'll play with this over the weekend. Snapshots make it a no gamble task, only a half hour or so of running time. It might be that I need to do something to VirtualBox if I update to Debian 9. Time to read around. At this point I don't really want Debian 9 but I do want to know what is happening here. ps-- after thinking some I now bet it upgraded to 9 without me seeing anything and I need a new VBox version.
Yep, the dist-upgrade command in my script became effective 6-17 when 9 was placed as ready to go. I have used this shell script for a long time now but when Debian put 9 officially in play sure enough my command line structure called it down. Needless to say I am changing my command line. LOL! Thanks again. I could have just pasted the line below in a terminal and noticed it plain as day. Dummy! lsb_release -a
The easiest way for the future is to simply change the STABLE to JESSIE in the source list as shown below. This way any needed changes from this source will come down but only for jessie. Duh!! old: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free new: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free
I knew that but I hadn't checked my source list for a long time now. Having "stable" never caused a problem until Stretch became the "stable" in the command line. LOL! Lesson learned. I always love to learn stuff even if it is simple like this was. Its so easy to get careless with Debian because it usually works without a hitch for months or years even. Really love Debian for what I do. I'll move to Stretch in a couple of months when the "bugs" are all worked out. Thanks again.