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
                  unavailable = all other cases
                  after = continue downloading debs after patching has ended
                default is s,b,e

       -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
                mutt
                    send logs by email using mutt
                icedove
                    send logs by email using icedove (as root!)
                http
                    send by http (the easiest and most recommended method!)

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 if the debdelta-too-big timestamp file exists, 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 the --deb-policy big is 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.