Problem when upgrading Debian from stable (lenny) to testing (squeeze)

Question

I just got a VPS for private use, and wanted to upgrade it to Debian testing (squeeze) in order to have newer packages. The actual version was Debian stable (lenny).

What I did is simply :

1. edit /etc/apt/sources.list and replace lenny with squeeze
2. run apt-get update
3. run apt-get dist-upgrade

This is AFAIK the standard way of upgrading a machine. However, I got the following error :

Selecting previously deselected package insserv.
dpkg: considering deconfiguration of sysv-rc, which would be broken by installation of insserv ...
dpkg: yes, will deconfigure sysv-rc (broken by insserv).
(Reading database ... 37095 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking insserv (from .../insserv_1.12.0-14_i386.deb) ...
De-configuring sysv-rc ...
Setting up insserv (1.12.0-14) ...
(Reading database ... 37124 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace sysv-rc 2.86.ds1-61 (using .../sysv-rc_2.87dsf-8_all.deb) ...
touch: setting times of `/etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering': Bad address
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/sysv-rc_2.87dsf-8_all.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/sysv-rc_2.87dsf-8_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

When trying to install sysv-rc itself, I get the following error. The file in question (/etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering) exists, but is empty.

Has anybody an idea of what causes this error, and how I could solve it ?

Answer 1

The problem comes from a preinst script (a package maintainer script that is run before the installation of the package). It is likely to be '/var/lib/dpkg/info/sysv-rc.preinst'

touch fails to set the modification date of /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering.

Try to 'touch' any file yourself. Try to delete it and rerun it.

Did apt upgrade the glibc before sysv-rc ? There are many bugreport concerning that problem, not only on Debian.

Look for "touch bad address" on search engines...

I believe this is something related to both (kernel + libc)

Answer 2

The standard upgrade instructions usually include an basic upgrade (upgrade or safe-upgrade) before the dist-upgrade step. You should give the upgrade instructions in the release notes a read. The notes for Sqeeze do not appear to be available yet, unsurprisingly, but those for Lenny should be a good start: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html