2.6 Kernel in Debian?

[Crusty]

Check the last post.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't think you can install sid directly, but that's probably what you'll want as it has the newest software. Best bet would probably get one of the sarge beta installers (they let you pick the distro but last I saw sid didn't work, that may have changed) and after you install a minimal sarge system dist-upgrade to sid. The less you have installed before the dist-upgrade the smoother it'll be =)

If you don't want to use the sarge installer or you have problems with it you can go directly from woody to sid via dist-upgrade as well.

It takes a little while to get into the Debian mindset, so don't get rid of it as soon as you realize not all the packages are as new as the one's in Gentoo. In many ways it's a good thing, more time is spent making the packages work well and on QA and a lot of packages like X have hundreds of patches that aren't applied upstream yet that need to be tested on all 12 architectures.

 

[lowtech1]

Unofficial sarge/sid ISOs

 

[drag]

From what I understand SID installs are only "unofficial". I tried on 2 different occassions to install sid directly, but it failed miserably.

No part of the installer exept the bits about handling modules and stuff worked. I had to set up networking by hand, had to partition/format/mount all the partitions completely by hand. Eventually I just gave up on the installer completely and used the debian starter tarball thingi and installed it Gentoo-style ( untar base system to mount; chroot into partition; set up apt/bootloader/networking, then used dselect to install and upgrade everything I needed.)


Generally what Debian wants you to do is to install the current stable (just a minimal install, no X or anything yet) and then upgrade it to SID by changing the /etc/apt/source.lst and doing a apt-get update/apt-get dist-upgrade. Probably helps to keep down the unknown variables to try to get people to install that way. After all it is "unstable". I installed straight from unstable, though, and it worked out just fine.

 

[Crusty]

Okay, now I am confused...

Stable - Currently Woody
Testing - Gets newer packages then Stable, but not Bleeding edge
Unstable - Bleeding edge...


Where does sid fit in...ugh.

 

[cleverhandle]

Sid = Unstable

This is always true, even when the names for stable and testing change - Sid is still unstable.

 

[Crusty]

So to get a working sid install I need to install Woody, basic install no packages and then change /etc/apt/source.lst and then update using apt?

 

[cleverhandle]

Yes, that's the reliable way to do it. Directly installing Sid from a net install would be nicer, but that depends on the state of the installers available at the time.

 

[Crusty]

Do you recommend any netinst ISO over another one?

 

[cleverhandle]

I haven't tried any Sarge/Sid netinstalls in over a month, and they've certainly changed a lot since then. So I can't really make any relevant comments as to that. But I wouldn't waste time fussing over a direct net install - just install a minimal Woody as drag suggested and go from there. It can be a good exercise in understanding your system, anyway - there are quite a few packages even in the "minimal" install that can be purged before you dist-upgrade to Sid.

 

[Crusty]

How do I get a basic install of woody, just download the full ISO, or use one of the ones listed on here...http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

 

[cleverhandle]

Either is fine. I use the full ISO since it saves a little bit of time downloading packages, but the netinst images will do if you don't want to download the full ISO for disc 1.

 

[Crusty]

What do I need to change my /etc/apt/sources.list to?

Could one of you guys just post it or something?

I changed all the stables to unstables...but when I ran apt-get update I got lots of errors.

 

[Crusty]

What do I need to change my /etc/apt/sources.list to?

Could one of you guys just post it or something?

I changed all the stables to unstables...but when I ran apt-get update I got lots of errors.

 

[cleverhandle]

Perhaps your mirrors don't carry unstable? Not every mirror carries every flavor. Anyway, here's mine...

# Unstable package sources

# the main Debian packages
deb http://archive.progeny.com/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

# the non-US Debian packages
deb http://non-us.debian.org/ unstable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/ unstable/non-US main contrib non-free


Kind of boring - I only use unstable occasionally when particular packages from testing are lagging.

 

[Crusty]

Yeah, I figured my mirrors weern't working right, so I changed them to a few different ones and it works great now.

Got FLuxBox up and running...but X is using a Vesa driver...it wouldn't load when I tried the kernel ATI driver..i'll look into that later though.

 

[Crusty]

I cant seem to find a packeage for the 2.6 kernel in Debian..would I just be able to download the sources seperately and compile it?

 

[Nothinman]

They're in sid and from looking at my Alpha it seems test9 also exists in sarge. But they're only at test9 and test11 is out so it's probably better to get the full source from kernel.org and go from there.

$apt-cache search kernel-image | grep 2.6
kernel-image-2.6.0-test9-1-386 - Linux kernel image for version 2.6.0-test9 on 386.
kernel-source-2.6.0-test9 - Linux kernel source for version 2.6.0-test9 with Debian patches

 

[drag]

You can use the debian package management to install and uninstall kernels. I find out that it's much easier to deploy custom kernels using it since a package can be transported from one debian box to another easily. (I order to do this the easiest make everything you need in modules and use Redhat's kudzu to set up everything, if it's just for one machine this is not a issue)


I find that this site is usefull for getting started in debian. It also has a very good howto for compiling your own kernels into debian .deb packages. That way you can use a custom kernel to fuffil package dependances and stuff like that.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I wouldn't really recommend running sid unless you know what you're doing. Things can and do break in fairly big ways.

What I do is put both testing and unstable sources in sources.list, and set my default release to testing in apt.conf. Then things come from testing, and if I specifically want something from unstable, I can apt-get install -t unstable <foo>. Because I only need a small portion of things from unstable; for most stuff, testing is more than fine for me.

 

[Crusty]

Well, so far with sid, i've got a 2.6 kernel up and running. All the programs I need run great and so far haven't crapped out...except for sound...but thats an alsa problem which I will work on after my last two finals.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I ran it for a couple months before I had any problems. Problems do happen though, it's called SID (Still In Development) for a reason. Check out apt-listbugs.

 

[Nothinman]

I wouldn't really recommend running sid unless you know what you're doing. Things can and do break in fairly big ways.

I wouldn't recommend against sid, things occasionally break but it's usually fixable by just reverting to an older version of the package (/var/cache/apt/archives) and waiting a few days for the new, fixed package to get uploaded.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
What I do is put both testing and unstable sources in sources.list, and set my default release to testing in apt.conf. Then things come from testing, and if I specifically want something from unstable, I can apt-get install -t unstable <foo>. Because I only need a small portion of things from unstable; for most stuff, testing is more than fine for me.

Do you have this working with dselect as well, or just straight apt? I follow releases in the same way you do, and have been trying to make this work well for some time. But if I do what you described, dselect still tries to update packages that have new versions in unstable - that is, it doesn't respect the pin. I've grown rather fond of dselect at this point and don't really want to ditch it...

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
What I do is put both testing and unstable sources in sources.list, and set my default release to testing in apt.conf. Then things come from testing, and if I specifically want something from unstable, I can apt-get install -t unstable <foo>. Because I only need a small portion of things from unstable; for most stuff, testing is more than fine for me.

Do you have this working with dselect as well, or just straight apt? I follow releases in the same way you do, and have been trying to make this work well for some time. But if I do what you described, dselect still tries to update packages that have new versions in unstable - that is, it doesn't respect the pin. I've grown rather fond of dselect at this point and don't really want to ditch it...

I just use apt, but a lot of people seem to like aptitude, maybe try that.