This page describes how to keep your Slackware system up to date.

Keep old kernel. See http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:slackware_admin:systemupgrade

slackpkg is a very convenient tool for that job. It can download update packages from the net and install them. In order to use it, you first have to uncomment a Slackware mirror close to your location for your Slackare version in the file /etc/slackpkg/mirrors

Before you start:

1. Take care, slackpkg clean-system removes unofficial packages as well. You have to put unofficial packages into the blacklist. See comments in /etc/slackpkg/blacklist and man slackpkg.
2. Make sure to have a copy of the original version of every file you modified in /etc. Give the original files a uniform extension, eg. .sborg
3. Make sure you don't have any old .new files somewhere in /etc

According to http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:slackware_admin:systemupgrade install-new installs ony new packages. It does not install packages you intentionally skipped on installaton.

First Back up /etc to be on the save side:

rm -r /etc.bak
find /etc -name '*.new'       # Output must be empty! 
cp -a /etc /etc.bak

Slackpkg usage:

slackpkg check-updates        # to see if updates are necessary at all
slackpkg update               # to update the package list
slackpkg upgrade slackpkg 
slackpkg upgrade glibc-solibs
slackpkg install-new          # only for Slack current or upgrade to next Slackware version!
slackpkg upgrade-all          # to finally install the new versions of existing packages
slackpkg clean-system         # only for current and distupgrade (?)

1. An initrd must be created if the generic kernel is used
2. Lilo must be reinstalled
3. the symlink /etc/rc.d/rc.modules must be adjusted manually

/var/www/htdocs/index.html may be created by the update if it did not exist before. This may conflict with your custom start page, eg index.php

Go on with fixing config files (below)!

1st manually sync your local mulilib mirror, then

slackpkg check-updates        # to see if updates are necessary at all
slackpkg update               # to update the package list
slackpkg upgrade slackpkg 
 
cd <local_mulitlib_mirror>
upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new *.t?z
upgradepkg --install-new slackware64-compat32/*-compat32/*.t?z
 
slackpkg install-new          # only for Slack current or upgrade to next Slackware version!
slackpkg upgrade-all          # to finally install the new versions of existing packages
slackpkg clean-system         # only for current and distupgrade (?)

Continue with lilo etc. See above!

After slackpkg has installed the new packages you will be asked how to treat the new config files. Select the first option, i.e. old config files are preserved and new config files get the extension .new.

For everey new config file, it is most convenient to do an automated mv or merge with the script sbMergeEtcConfig

Move this to slack_install

Have at least 2 partitions: A /-partition where the linux distribution is installed and a /home where all distribution independend things are located. During upgrade, / will be completely overwritten by the new distribution, while /home remains untouched.

Not tested yet: If your current system isn't split like this, you can copy the content of the disk to an image file on a separate drive (eg. USB-drive), then re-partion the drive and restore the content afterward. Use commands like:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=harddisk-image # Make the image
dd if=harddisk-image of=/dev/hda1 # Restore the disk content

See http://ldp.bootet.net/LDP/sag/html/sag.html#DISK-NO-FS . Maybe also the cat command is an option. See slackware-11.0/rootdisks/README.TXT