On Monday 25 April 2011 13:11:53 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Mick.
> 
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 04:44:05PM +0100, Mick wrote:
> > On Sunday 24 April 2011 14:25:58 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > > Hi, Mick.
> > > 
> > > On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 09:17:45AM +0100, Mick wrote:
> > > > On Saturday 23 April 2011 21:06:25 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > > > > On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 08:46:30PM +0100, Mick wrote:
> > > > python-updater -v -p
> > > > 
> > > > to get a list of these.
> > > 
> > > That gives me a list of 24 packages.  Am I meant to actually run
> > > python-updater without the -p, here?
> > 
> > That's correct.  As the man emerge say -p stands for --pretend.  Just
> > to give a chance to see what it wants to do and think about it before
> > you run it again without it for execution.
> > 
> > You need to do this next.
> 
> DONE.
> 
> > > > When you finish all this you can run:
> > > > 
> > > > emerge --depclean -v -p
> > > > 
> > > > It should now ask you to remove the old python, but check carefully
> > > > the remaining packages in case something important is in the list
> > > > and breaks your system.
> > > 
> > > I do emerge --depclean -v -p.  It says I should run emerge -uDN
> > > @world first.  I'm a bit apprehensive about this, since the world
> > > update says it would reemerge 138 packages (I'm not sure whether this
> > > is top-level (whatever that means) packages or the real total).  In
> > > that list are 3 blockages I don't know wha do do with.  My experience
> > > suggests this will not work smoothly, and I'll likely be left with a
> > > non-working (or even a non-bootable) system.
> > 
> > At this stage you should only run:
> > 
> > python-updater -v
> > 
> > Nothing else.
> > 
> > Once it completes you can run --depclean which will ask you to remove
> > the older 2.6 python package.
> 
> I had to (or, at least, did) run emerge -uND @world.  Funnily enough, it
> ran to completion without manual intervention.  :-)  I'd like to run
> --depclean, but it's threatening to remove my 2.6.31-r6 kernel sources,
> which correspond to my working kernel.  What's the easiest way to protect
> these from --depclean?

Aha! That's why I said first look at what it wants to remove - you don't want 
to cripple your system.  In this case of course it won't cripple anything, 
because it won't remove the kernel image from /boot/

If you look in /usr/src/linux/ you will see a number of kernel sources listed 
in there.  If you've run update world there should be a more up-to-date kernel 
awaiting for you to configure and compile it.  Do that first; copy the 
necessary files into /boot; configure grub.conf to boot with you latest 
kernel; and after you boot into it and check that all is good you can allow --
depclean to remove older kernel source files.

PS.  You may need to manually remove older source files left in 
/usr/src/linux/ when depclean completes its job.
-- 
Regards,
Mick