NAME

       debdelta-upgrade - Downloads all deltas that may be used to 'apt-get upgrade', and apply them.

SYNOPSIS

       debdelta-upgrade [OPTION]... [PACKAGE] ...

DESCRIPTION

       This  program  is  designed  to  download changes (deltas) that may be used to apt-get upgrade all listed
       packages, and apply them.  If no package is listed in the  command  line,  then  it  will  apply  to  all
       upgradable packages. See debdelta(1) for more details on the delta files.

OPTIONS

       --dir DIR
              directory  where  to  save  results.  (default: /var/cache/apt/archives for root, /tmp/archive for
              non-root users)

       --format FORMAT
              format of recreated debs. FORMAT=deb is the usual, FORMAT=unzipped means that the data.tar part is
              not compressed, (and this may save some time)

       --deb-policy POLICY
              policy to decide which debs to download, it is a comma separated list of (abbreviations of)
                  source =  there is no /etc/debdelta/sources.conf line
                  big =  the delta is too big
                  error =  the delta fails to apply in the client
                  tiny = the new package is small (the server ignores such packages)
                  fail = the server failed to create the delta
                  queued = the delta is queued to be made in the server
                  unavailable = all other cases
                  after = continue downloading debs after patching has ended
                default is s,b,e,t,f

       -v     verbose (can be added multiple times).

       -d     print  full  traceback  on Python errors; save useful info in temporary files in case that a delta
              fails.

       -k     keep temporary files (use for debugging).

        -A --accept-unsigned
              accept unsigned deltas.

        --gpg-home
              specify a different home for GnuPG, default for root is /etc/debdelta/gnupg while for other  users
              is unset. See --homedir in gpg(1) for details.

        --forensic METHOD
              if a delta fails, report logs so that the problem may be addressed.  Method may be
                do
                    just prepare logs and say where they are (default)
                mutt
                    send logs by email using mutt
                icedove
                    send logs by email using icedove (as root!)
                http
                    send by http (currently not working)

       --timeout SECONDS
                 adjust timeout for connections, default is 15 seconds

EXAMPLES

       When  invoked  as  root, apt-get update && debdelta-upgrade && apt-get upgrade will download delta files,
       recreate the needed Debian packages,  and  then  upgrade  your  Debian  host.  When  only  slow  Internet
       connection  is available, the above procedure may be significantly faster than "apt-get update && apt-get
       upgrade".  (Use -v to see how much faster.)

       The package manager cupt uses deltas as well when upgrading.

SECURITY

       A Debian package that is recreated using debdelta-upgrade is byte-by-byte identical to the original  one;
       when   "apt-get  upgrade"  is subsequently invoked, the cryptographic archive authentication support (see
       apt-secure (8) ) will guarantee that it can be trusted  to  be  installed.   Moreover,  the  delta  files
       themselves  are  cryptographically  protected  using  GnuPG, MD5 and SHA1 (using the same method as dpkg-
       sig(1) ), and debdelta-upgrade will refuse to apply corrupted or unsigned deltas (but, see option -A ).

DOWNLOAD AND PROXIES

       debdelta-upgrade downloads deltas in two passes: in the first pass, it downloads the  first  kB  of  each
       delta,  to  extract  the  delta  parameters  and  to examine them. If the delta does not exist, it checks
       existence of flag timestamps in the remote server (such  as  debdelta-too-big  debdelta-queued  debdelta-
       failed  ), and then it examines the --deb-policy to decide if to download the deb instead.  In the second
       pass, it downloads (the rest of) the deltas and queues them in a patching queue.

       For plain direct http  downloads,  debdelta-upgrade  uses  the  Python  library  'httplib'  directly;  in
       particular, it uses keep-alive features, and this speeds up a lot the first pass.

       If   variables such as http_proxy are set in the environment,  then instead debdelta-upgrade will use the
       'urllib2' module: this though slows down sensibly the first pass above (since 'urllib2' opens a different
       connection  for  each  download);  moreover  'urllib2'  seems to be buggy in some places (for example, it
       transforms http response "401"  into "404" , and "302" into "200") so the output explanation  printed  by
       debdelta-upgrade  in  case  of download error may be wrong; and most of the opetions for --deb-policy are
       currently disabled (until the author understands 'urllib2' better).

EXIT STATUS

       See debdelta(1)

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to <mennucc1@debian.org>.

SIZES

       In the program printout  kB = 1024 bytes and MB = 1024^2 bytes .

AUTHORS

       Debdelta was written and is copyright © 2006-09 Andrea Mennucci.
       This man page was written by Jegou Pierre-yves  <pierreyves.jeg@voila.fr>.

COPYING

       This is free software.  You may redistribute copies of it under the terms  of  the  GNU  Library  General
       Public  License  <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.0.html>.   There  is  NO  WARRANTY,  to  the  extent
       permitted by law.

SEE ALSO

       debdelta(1), apt-get(8), /usr/share/doc/debdelta/README.upgrade, /usr/share/doc/debdelta/README.