Upgrading Debian Etch to Lenny

You see that old computer over there, you know the one with 900 days of up-time running Debian etch. Odd that when you try to get updates that it just gives you 404 errors.. right?

No, sadly etch has no since been sunsetted and is no longer supported for security updates. But fear not, you can easily upgrade that box to Lenny.

First you need to update your apt repositories. Change all of the following etch to lenny

#vi /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ <strong>etch</strong> main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ <strong>etch</strong> main
deb http://security.debian.org/ <strong>etch</strong>/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ <strong>etch</strong>/updates main
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile <strong>etch</strong>/volatile main
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile <strong>etch</strong>/volatile main

Now you need to get those into the system so run:

#apt-get update

Finally, just keep it simple and don't bother with aptitude, just use:

#apt-get dist-upgrade

Boom, you're done. Reboot the box and let the new kernel get applied and you should be good to go!