Dec 092011
 

Debian Squeeze was released 06.02.2011 and Lenny’s support will (probably) be is discontinued since 06.02.2012.

 

Problem: apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade broke everything, server did not boot anymore.

Troubleshooting: squeeze has grub2, which our Xen 3.x and pygrub didn’t understand

Solution: upgrading with following steps, use apt-get or aptitude, whichever you like.

  1. Update Lenny
    aptitude update
    aptidude upgrade
  2. Replace lenny with squeeze in /etc/apt/sources.list – or add necessary entries to another file under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
    deb http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
    deb http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib non-free
    deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
  3. Update repository
    aptitude update
  4. Upgrade critical parts first
    aptitude install dpkg apt aptitude
  5. (Dist-)upgrade rest
    aptitude upgrade
    aptitude dist-upgrade
  6. Replace grub2 with grub1 (or just keep your old menu.lst at /boot/grub/)
    aptitude purge grub-pc
    aptitude install grub-legacy
  7. Check that /boot/grub/menu.lst exists and defaults to right kernel
  8. Reboot and hope for the best

 

Also remember to use 2.6.39 -kernel from backports for live migration to work.
Update 01/2013: 2.6.32 -kernel usually works just fine, Lenny’s EOL date is 6.2.2012.