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.