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"quick" debian questions...

N

Need4Speed

Diamond Member
As some of you might have noticed, I've been asking a lot about debian lately...the reason being, that I'm in the process of converting all my redhat boxes over to another distro, and debian seemed to be a logical choice.

I've already converted my local file server over to debian, and I truly like the light footprint and user involvement during installation. Having had some time now to spend on debian has brought me to some questions that I hope that some of you might help me with.

So....

1. How is debian as far as keeping their packages up to date, i.e. releasing new packages to address security exploits etc.?

2. Whats the best method to upgrade several machines at once? Cron apt-get upgrade? apt-get dist-upgrade?

3. Could someone share some of their tips,tricks that they generally perform after an initial debian installtion (non-workstation)?

TIA

 
1. How is debian as far as keeping their packages up to date, i.e. releasing new packages to address security exploits etc.?
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If you want the latest packages, you can use the unstable branch, which seems to be quite well kept up. If you're just looking for a secure server, then using the stable branch will work well for you. From what I remember, the unstable branch doesn't get backported security updates like the stable branch does. Instead, unstable just gets the newest package release to overwrite the old.

2. Whats the best method to upgrade several machines at once? Cron apt-get upgrade? apt-get dist-upgrade?
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I would be very hesitant to cron *any* upgrading system, as doing blind updates is a very good way of killing your system (or a vital part of it). If you must cron one of the above, do 'apt-get upgrade', as it will just update non-system packages.

3. Could someone share some of their tips,tricks that they generally perform after an initial debian installtion (non-workstation)?
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😉 Sorry, I don't have any!
 
1. How is debian as far as keeping their packages up to date, i.e. releasing new packages to address security exploits etc.?
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Security updates are as good or better than other distros, in the 'stable' distribution patches are back ported to whatever version is in stable because no new versions of software go into stable without an extremely good reason.

If you just want newer packages for features you'll need to run unstable or testing.

2. Whats the best method to upgrade several machines at once? Cron apt-get upgrade? apt-get dist-upgrade?
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I wouldn't cron dist-upgrade, it can remove packages if an udpated package changes dependencies.

3. Could someone share some of their tips,tricks that they generally perform after an initial debian installtion (non-workstation)?
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I usually just copy my config files from my other /home directory that I need, like .vimrc, then start setting up whatever services the box is going to provide.
 
If you just want newer packages for features you'll need to run unstable or testing.
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nope....just want to make sure I have th emost secure package. so thats good news.

I noticed you mentioed vim...which I use as well. On my redhat boxes, when i edited files, color coding was used, but debian only uses standard console font. is that controlled by vimrc?
 
when i edited files, color coding was used, but debian only uses standard console font. is that controlled by vimrc?
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Everything is controlled by vimrc, RedHat makes colors the default when you install the vim-enhanced package, or something like that. Just put 'syn on' in ~/.vimrc and it should turn on syntax coloring.
 
great thanx..these are the nitty gritty things I'm talking about, and I imagine there have to be a ton of them that Rh takes careof behind the scenes...should be interesting to see what kinds of walls ill run into
 
I find it more annoying that RedHat makes the vim-enhanced package seperate =)

Anyway make sure you have the 'vim' package installed in Debian and not the nvi pacakge, nvi is a vi clone that has very little in the way of frills.
 
Yeah when you first install debian do a ls -l `which vi` and it's probably a symlink to nvi.

Also I find that I always wind up missing a module or 2 so I recompile a new kernel on first or 2nd reboot.
 
forgive my kernel newbieness, but whats the advantage of recompiling the kernel to use a module vs. inserting a loadable module?
 
but whats the advantage of recompiling the kernel to use a module vs. inserting a loadable module?
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There's no difference, I assume he means he has to recompile because the Debian kernel config doesn't include whatever kernel module he's talking about.

I havn't had that happen lately, I usually just run the kernel-image-something package on my servers, especially since it takes a while to compile a kernel on a 167Mhz Ultra1 =)

Yeah when you first install debian do a ls -l `which vi` and it's probably a symlink to nvi.
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nvi is always installed by default unless you choose otherwise on the first reboot that runs dselect.
 
cool, i got the syntax highlighting to work...got my dircolors working...now how do i get the man pages to format as they did in RH. all my boxes are headless, so I SSH in to do any work thatneeds to be done. On the RH system, the man pages are formatted such that bold text is a shown as white, while standard text is grey. on the debian box all is grey with no syntaxing. some kick me in the right direction please.
 
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