Jamo Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Hi. I installed BT4 last year, when BT4 final was just released. I used if for a couple months. At that tine apt-get update/upgrade/dist-upgrade worked well. Then when BT4 R2 was released I upgraded it again after a long break. Now when I start BT4 it says welcome to bt4 R2... However it uses a old kernel. uname -a Linux bt 2.6.30.9 #1 SMP Tue Dec 1 21:51:08 EST 2009 i686 GNU/Linux and when Im trying to update it apt-get update download those package lists apt-get upgrade just says that 0 to be upgraded. apt-get dist-upgrade also says that 0 to be upgraded. Im sure, that there should be some updates available. apt-get ain't completely broken, cause I can install other programs. So whats wrong with it. How should I troubleshoot it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr-Protocol Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Backtrack is made to not update to most current kernel and program updates on purpose. This is to ensure that all programs work and to give a distro where they do all work. Upgrading the kernel or even some applications may cause issues where they will not work so they are forced to stay at the version they are. Yet again... BackTrack is not ment to be installed as an everyday OS. It's ment for a live CD. BackTrack 5 will be released soon enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamo Posted February 6, 2011 Author Share Posted February 6, 2011 Well usually there are some updates. That software sources app vas not working and at start menu was no entry for synaptics so there was somerhing wrong. I foud out that there was a newer kernel installed but it werent in grub. Update-grub didind detected it but it didnt show up at boot menu. Then i decided to install grub2 and now grub doesnt work at all. It gives a lot of errors. It says that theres a error on row 1. It gives errors for each line. And puts me to command line. So i have to find out how to manually get bt4 started from grub2. I have bt4 installed on external hdd so i can edit files easily. And recover all important files before installing bt5 when its released. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr-Protocol Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 As I said, it's ment to be a live distro. You should save critical files to the external instead of having a full blown install on a drive. It is not ment to be up-to-date with the newest kerenl because of compatibility. Copy your ~/ to another drive and just re-install. Ideally all you would need to update is svn update in metasploit folder for pen-testing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Try downloading BT4R2 (the latest version). Their roadmap mentions kernel lockdown for certain versions when they do new revisions. I think they might have a fork on the repositories for updates as well SVN, for different versions, since they have different kernels and different software installed on both(ie:armitage now part of the repository and included in latest backtrack SVN updates for Metasploit). September 2010Bug fixes and security fix imports Package and repository updates Freeze kernel and desktop environment Open the BackTrack Bug Tracker to the community QA, testing cycle Update general tools - http://www.backtrack-linux.org/bt/roadmap/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamo Posted February 7, 2011 Author Share Posted February 7, 2011 Yea its a live disto but it helps to learn if you install it and use it for daily use too. Not forever but untill you got better understanding how to use it. At bt4 forums was told that you can upgrade atleast to R1 jut by apt-get dist-upgrade. So who wouldnt it work with R2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParMan Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 i had to download the bt4 r2 and do a complete install of it the dis-upgrade didnt work for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr-Protocol Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 As mentioned before. They freeze updates for compatibility. If you want the most up to date stuff, install ubuntu and then install the tools you want. Some tools may not play nice with newer kernels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hexophrenic Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 You need to install the latest kernel image package to get the new kernel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamo Posted February 7, 2011 Author Share Posted February 7, 2011 Yea, but I just first need to get grub working so I could boot to BT4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr-Protocol Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Download Back|Track R2, Install it, if it has no updates... it's for a reason. They freeze the updates. There is no need to force updates to the newest kernel, if you do, some of the programs will not work. It's not hard to comprehend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hexophrenic Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I beg to differ. Every app I use (most but not all of them) work just fine with a dist-upgrade and kernel image update. A solid understanding of the underlying OS and how to upgrade it goes a long way as there is nothing truly magical about BT|4, but it may be quicker to just reinstall. Each to their own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr-Protocol Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 They have had issues before with some of the larger more complex frameworks with backtrack. Not sure which ones but I used to watch their forums a lot and there were issues with kernel updating. The big issue was updating from BT4 to R1 new kernel. apt-get did not update it correctly and there was some other process to get the kernel to update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hexophrenic Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I do remember that debacle now that you mention it. It was "fexid" a few days later, but that was a bear. Good thing I had a pre-dist-upgrade snapshot. After a couple of days, though, all was good again. Good catch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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