Interview with Ian Jackson

Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson, Trevelyan writes: "Debian Planet has an interview with the long time Debian maintainer, and a former DPL, a current member of the technical committee and the author of dpkg. Also announced Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r7 released. In case some of you thought Debian won't be releasing anything this year =)"

Comments

Port ports!!!!

[isolation]

Debian is always out of date so why dont they add a bsd like ports system.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I believe what you're looking for is called gentoo.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[phaxkolumbo]

Amen to that.
I was running debian happily, but then I had terrible trouble upgrading to mozilla 1.0. Debian has it's points, but up-to-dateness isn't one of those.

Now I'm running gentoo, which pretty much solves the problem with binary only distributions (yeah, i know, you can recompile with debian also.).

Re:Port ports!!!!

[WanderingGhost]

Debian is always out of date so why dont they add a bsd like ports system.
Just for the record... Last time I tried FreeBSD, I found the ports tree not to be all that stable. Trying to install gdm I found something like 4 or 5 broken dependencies.
You can't get quality in a hurry. (Not that FreeBSD isn't great and stable -- I'm just saying Debian is absolutely more polished)
Anyway -- Debian will have something similar to the ports tree (but better) in Woody+1. (apt-src)
Besides that, Debian has been innovating since ever, and has great features:
- APT (now in Conectiva too)
- update-alternatives (now in Red Hat)
- First to adhere closely to FHS
- Bug reporting tools are the best I've ever seen (try reportbug -- the latest version even warns you about the "usual non-bugs in this package") - Kernel compiling tools are quite sophisticated - Debian has been incorporating more Java packages than any other distribution I know of
- Runs on *lots* of architectures. First to use the Hurd. Will soon work wirh BSD kernels (Free, Net & Open)
- Recently created apt-src program will let you create source trees much better than the BSD ports tree.

That's why it takes time to release a new version of Debian.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at Gentoo, which provides the best of BSD and Linux worlds: http://www.gentoo.org

I assure you won't be disapointed.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Vulture_]

Ever heard of testing? Replace 'stable', 'slink', or (when it's released) 'woody' with 'testing' in /etc/apt/sources.list and update. Then everything's fairly up-to-date, but since it's already gone through 2 weeks of testing by people who run unstable (like me), it's also fairly stable. It's not as stable as 'stable', of course, but it's not horribly outdated, either.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run 'unstable', being out-of-date isn't a worry. I've only had one problem running unstable (having to do with Galeon and Mozilla when it went 1.0), which I think is a fairly good record.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what cave you live in but...

unstable doesn't have xfree86 4.2.0, kde3 or gnome 2.

It doesn't have a lot of other stuff either but those are the most obvious things.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but add experimental to your sources.list and you can download gnome2. and XFree4.2 and KDE3 can be downloaded from other places

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya and it can be just as unstable or more so than any other distro or *nix available.

What's the point.

I mean i can just compile that crap if i want, but i want a distro that integrates this stuff into the release in a reasonable amount of time.

Shit i mean if i wanted to use a bunch of sketchy packages collected from different corners of the net to have a up to date distro i'd just run slackware.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[a_mastronardi]

Sorry but Debian isn't out of date. If you like, you can use testing or unstable versin of package and you are more updated that with other distro. But if you want a very stable system maybe it's ok to wait the stable. The difference are in security. Now I run 3 servers, two with RedHat and one with Debian, and difference are important.
I can wait for Debian developer to release the new version with it's ok in quality and security features. If you like more "updates" and more insecure system use Redhat like distro.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you look at the response time to the most recent security problems rehdta beat debian hands down.

Second the testing and unstable versions are not officially supported security wise so the developers have no obligation to release patches for them.

Next even the most bleeding edge (read: unstable\insecure) version of debian doesn't have xfree86 4.3.0 or kde3.

So as usual the rabid debian kiddies have no clue and just spread utterly false propoganda.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[/dev/trash]

or if you are like me you realize that testing has been frozen for a month now....

Re:Port ports!!!!

[billatq]

*shrugs* Just for the record, the last time I used FreeBSD, I found it to be one of the most stable and fast operating systems that I've ever used. The ports tree is updated quite often and damn, those ports maintainers port software quite quickly. However, I'm pretty impatient, and I want stuff upon release, so I'm using gentoo linux right now. I liked debian, but the updates to the software that I want to use when it's released was painfully slow. I suppose it all comes down to the need relating amount of stability vs. patience you have :)

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Vulture_]

Yeah, that's a problem with testing, but I'm sure it'll get worked out. In the mean time, it's still more up-to-date than stable.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Zenki]

What tends to happen is the ports directory lags behind software releases, especially the ports directory that gets installed from cd, and the particular .tar.gz source file that the makefile is trying to fetch isn't hosted on the web anymore.

It's really easy to get cvsup to continually update your ports directory. Just run it once in a while (like once a month or so) to update your ports directory to take into account newer versions of software packages and such. Once you do this, all issues with getting things built will probably never show up.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[orange7]

> First to use the Hurd.

Enough already -- you've convinced me.

A.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Sunnan]

I suggest running Debian Unstable (could be renamed to "Debian Current"). If you want source, just apt-get source package name. I don't see what BSD or Gentoo can do that Debian can't.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Potato was released in 2000, not in 1999, and can be upgraded through apt and security.debian.org (which downloads only security patches). Or, you can get the recently released r7 iso and update from there. You could argue ofcourse that software released in 2000 was written in 1999, so I'll give you half a point here.

Woody, which isn't released yet, can be upgraded from most mirrors by selecting the woody/updates branch, which covers security updates and some general updates. No points here.

Sid, which also isn't released yet, doesn't need anything special. Just following the regular branch will download the most recent packages with security fixes (normally just as fast as the other distro's) Seems like you forgot to mention sid.

You can say that debian sucks, but at least use wholly valid arguments.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Put this in your /etc/apt/sources.list if you haven't already:

deb http://security.debian.org/ woody/updates main contrib non-free

It helps.

Re:Port ports!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

to upgrade an existing port on fbsd, i must cvsup the port tree and build again and then upgrade it, thats too much work , apt will beat you !

Wait

[SavingPrivateNawak]

I thought I had Debian 2.2.19...

What is 2.2r7? These version numbers always confuse me...

Anyway, when are they going to release Debian 3??

May 1st was two month ago now!!!

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I would just say why are they releasing more 2.2 stuff when they should just finalize Woody. Not that it even needs to be finalized, really. I ran it all the time when I had Debian installed, it was stable and neato enough for me.

Re:Wait

[lordsutch]

I would just say why are they releasing more 2.2 stuff when they should just finalize Woody.

That assumes that the same people that are finalizing woody are also the same people who released 2.2r7. I believe this is a false assumption, although the exact responsibilities of the members of the Cabal (TINC) are kept secret from us mere mortal developers.

Re:Headline of story should read...

[ranger8x]

i'm sure the percentage of people that haven't heard him is higher than that, but that doesn't make his contributions any less important.

Desktop or Server

[xannik]

I would be interested for slashdot to host and interview with Ian. As a user of gentoo linux I have experienced much of the power of a ports based system with its portage package management system, which has close ties to Debian's very own apt-get and dpkg. Debian seems very focused on a stable kernel, even more so than any other distribution I know of. Would it not serve Debian to focus more on the Server side of things and leave the desktop to the propeller heads, Gentoo that is. :)

Re:Desktop or Server

[reaper20]

Debian seems very focused on a stable kernel, even more so than any other distribution I know of.

I think you mean a stable core of the distro. Debian uses Linus' kernels, they don't keep a seperate distribution specific fork like the commercial distributions.

Re:Desktop or Server

[Anonymous Coward]

That's becuase people like alan cox and andrea arcangeli expect to get paid...

Re:Desktop or Server

[jsse]

As a Debian and Gentoo user and being used Linux extensively for production environment, I think I could answer some, if not all, of your questions.

Gentoo is great, its portage system rocks. The feeling of optimizing every single piece of packages squeezing last drop of performance out of existing hardware is so cool.

However, portage system cannot beat Debian's package system in production environment. First of all, most production systems have most development system removed, especially for firewalls and edge servers. We are not doing it in order to make life harder, but we must reduce of risk and lost when the boxes are being hacked.

Second, updating of packages in portage system takes too much time. Even you do the update every day 'emerge -u world' still takes you a lot of time. Not to mention when we could only perform the update once per week.

Third and most important, the strength of Debian's package system does not only lie in its technical merit, but also its overall management by maintainers. As we know Debian is divided into three distro - stable, testing and still in development(or unstable). Each branch is carefully managed and maintained. The stable distro is very desirable for most production environment.

You may say most packages in 'stable' are too out-of-date, but it's really stable, thanks to the efforts of many maintainers.

I can say, the status of portage system is very near the sid distro of Debian. However, having unstable version deployed in production environment is very risky, especially on some servers involved expensive transactions where 10% boost in performance cannot cover the lost in single downtime.

Just my two cents.

Hey!

[SavingPrivateNawak]

I was serious! I ain't no Troll!

Guess some 'user' (read: editor) made my post part of the slashdot crap that is going on now...

Well, no Debian 3, no alcohol, no future, notable bore... Another typical saturday I guess

Re:Hey!

[Vulture_]

Don't worry, I'm sure the moderator will get ripped a new one in meta for that.

Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Its current (stable) distro has the oldest Linux software of any of the major distributions. If they do not release a 3.0 stable soon, they will most likely go the way of other dearly departed Linux Distributions, such as SLS (Steve's Linux System), and Yggdrasil.

Lots of current Debian users have all ready moved on to Gentoo. And while it is a fairly nice setup, I will continue to enjoy my uncrackable OpenBSD install. There's a reason they're going on 5 years without a remote hack.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize openBSD is quite crackable i hope?

No one beleives oracle when they say it so why would you believe the hype of openbsd?

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[SavingPrivateNawak]

Well 'outdated' is not a major problem when you want a RELIABLE server.
And I think this is the point of Debian Stable. Tell me exactly what you would need for a home or semi-pro server that's not in Debian Stable?
If you want recent software, 'testing' and unstable shall make you happy.

I think it's a very good thing that a distro keeps a branch that is very unlikely to cause security problems

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how having old ass versions of software from 3 years ago is supposed to help with security problems?

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Only dull server admins care about Debian Stable, noone else does (or should). Real men use unstable.. but seeing as that is also almost as out of date as stable nowadays Gentoo is the future!

It's a shame, as I love Debian, but it's glorious packaging system has become redundent with the lack of packages!

They should go with an OpenBSD like release, where they just package up stable every 6 months and call it a release, and things in the mean time filter down from unstable, through testing to stable.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[lordsutch]

There's a reason they're [OpenBSD] going on 5 years without a remote hack.

Funny, wasn't OpenBSD about the only Unix that turned out to be vulnerable to the OpenSSH hole in its "out of the box" configuration? Then again, I guess being an AC means you get to make shit up with no accountability...

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[oingoboingo]

Tell me exactly what you would need for a home or semi-pro server that's not in Debian Stable?

Journalling filesystems. I've got 120GB of crap on my home system, and there's not a fucking chance that I (or anyone else) should have to sit through ext2fs crawling through a filesystem that big because someone accidently pulled out the wrong power plug or there was a brownout.

People keep saying that Debian stable is perfect for servers. How can it be?!?! It's running from a 2.2 series kernel, so unless you're going to start patching like a quiltmaker on amphetamines (thus defeating the purpose of all that wonderful stability testing), you're not going to have journalling filesystems, large files over 2GB, decent SMP support, or drivers for any new gigabit ethernet, SCSI, RAID or SAN adapter card released in the last 3 years.

What sort of servers exactly is Debian stable suitable for? The only thing I can think of is small uniprocessor PC systems without any significant amount of attached storage, ie: a pissant little firewall or router. And there are better distros than Debian for those purposes.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Also the "out of the box" install that is supposed to be so secure is basically useless so if you want to actually do anything useful it's no longer in this "out of the box" stage and has no real guarantees of security. I've seen some openbsd boxes cracked before becuase the people believed the hype and thought they where invulnerable. Hah.

They people where like "but there's been no holes in the defualt install in years!"

1. There has been no PUBLISHED holes in the defualt install in that time.

2. If you try to actually use it for something "real world" you won't be in the "default install" category that's actually covered by these lofty claims, so you're on your own.

The best part is one was one of these was some half assed security firms website. haha.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[metallic]

I'm running kernel 2.4.18 with ext3. It really just depends on how much work you want to put into your system after Debian finishes installing. Switching from ext2 to ext3 literally took me less than 10 minutes.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Stable has to be heavily modified to run 2.4.x so either you aren't running the stable version or you changed so much stuff that, as the original poster said, it is now untested and that defeats the whole purpose.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[oingoboingo]

I know it's possible to upgrade Debian 2.2 to just about anything, but the argument that keeps being presented by Debian supporters is "Sure, Debian 2.2 is old, but it's heavily tested, and stable as hell". Fair enough. But when you start upgrading core components like the kernel, you aren't running that "heavily tested stable as hell" distribution any more. You're running something of your own invention, or something which hasn't been subjected to anywhere near the same level of testing and abuse.

It's either one or the other: You're stable but 3 years out of date, or you're up to date, but you're in the same boat as all the other distributions with regard to the amount of testing done...except that you've had to do all the hard work of upgrading, patching, etc etc yourself.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[lordsutch]

Well, except for the minor details that the URL and email address on my post are both valid, and I've got a +1 bonus, I suppose you're right... off to do some goat fucking.

Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[Ben Hutchings]

Security fixes are back-ported to the old versions, where necessary. 'stable' can be kept secure by adding security.debian.org to apt's sources and doing a regular apt-get update; apt-get upgrade.

Ian Jackson and the Holy Grail...

[tlambert]

When I first joined the project, dpkg was a very evil shell script that was little more than a placeholder.

Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp.

"I wrote dpkg v2, a Perl script, because it was the thing that needed writing next."

So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.

"The current C dpkg is actually the third dpkg. I think there may have been parts of the Perl one that were done by someone else, but I basically wrote the Perl version, and wrote all of the C version."

So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp

"Around the introduction of the C version, the format was changed from the old `two lines of text and two gzipped tarfiles'. I wanted something more extensible, with room for some additional out-of-band metadata. I also wanted something you didn't need Debian-specific tools to unpack."

but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.

-- Terry

Re:Ian Jackson and the Holy Grail...

[miracle69]

This, by far, is the funniest thing I've read on Slashdot in ages.

Re:Ian Jackson and the Holy Grail...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least I think it was a couple of years ago. I was with some people in a McDonald's on a school trip. There was an old man who brought one with him and was going around showing it to people. When I first saw it I thought it was pretty dopey, but when he came and showed it to us, though I hate to admit it, it made me laugh a bit. I'm not the type who usually laughs at this kind of thing. Once when required to write a story or essay with the title "Anything Can Happen" I wrote a story in which ended with the protagonist being killed by a falling bullet which was fired at the beginning of the story. From that you should be able to see how far talking fish are from my notion of what is funny. I think this shows that such a gadget can be somewhat amusing if used in moderation.

You can never have...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson

Grins. That was not exactly my experience. I used to work with him whilst he was doing a summer job before he went to Cambridge. He didn't actually get fired or have to resign; but let's just say that at the time he was rather more interested in security than the system administrators would wish perhaps...

Anyway he matured loads at Cambridge; must have done, cos he's still alive ;-)

Bloody smart guy.

Re:You can never have...

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah you used to work with some guy who used to run some distro no one uses!

You're fucking special!

Re:You can never have...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman uses Debian. He's somebody.

Re:You can never have...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to who? Some kiddies and a few rabid zealots on welfare?

Soul

[term_0z]

Yes! DebianGNU/Linux does got soul, it is the distro. of choice.
I can't wait until the stable 3.0 release will arrive, it will kick the other distros. out from the distro marked.
Shame on me, opensource is about sharing, and have freedom of choice.
I choose debian.

Re:Soul

[Anonymous Coward]

Well debian is the distro of choice for kiddies and zealots so i'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Re:Soul

[Anonymous Coward]

can't wait until the stable 3.0 release will arrive

I'm sorry, but you'll have to. And you'll have to wait a loooooong time too. I suggest you go and keep yourself busy with something else while you wait for 3.0 to be released, like getting a PhD, building a 747 from parts, or working out the next largest prime number by hand. You should be able to complete at least 2 of the above 3 tasks and still have time to jerk off over a picture of Stallman! Get to it, little zealot.

Re:Soul

[term_0z]

Ehm, what did I say? If you really do not like Debian, Stallman or one of those 747 planes, you don't have to comment me. Please.. keep to your windows, or MacOS or whatever you are using.

Debian is awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

I shouldn't feed the various trolls, but I guess I will. For one, someone mentioned OpenBSD's no remote hole in 5 years... Well that has changed now. Debian can compete with OpenBSD directly in the realm of security, because Debian backports EVERYTHING. They audit their code. No, they don't tout this fact like Theo does, but Debian is defintely covering their bases. And, you can be sure they will release a advisory AND a patch in a timely manner. Debian maintainers are some of the most talented guys out there, and highly motivated.

Someone said that Debian was dying because it hasn't made a stable release.. Well, clueless troll you are! Run Unstable. It is _cutting edge_.
I have ran Debian since 1.3, and for most of those years, I have used the unstable branch exclusively. I have been burned by it maybe 3 times. 3 bugs bad enough to affect my life. And every bug was fixed within a day. Let's see m$ or anyone else have that level of dedication.

Debian is very much alive and well, thank you very much, and I will continue to use for years to come, and should they stop maintaining, I will be happy to contribute, just to keep it going. Security, current packages, and reliability. Not bad for free software.

Re:Debian is awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian can compete with OpenBSD directly in the realm of security

Indeed, since they both run OpenSSH, they're both vulnerable to exactly the same remote root exploits.

Re:Debian is awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't make me laugh, this is such crap.

Debian can compete with OpenBSD directly in the realm of security, because Debian backports EVERYTHING.

Debian can't even come close to OpenBSD's security record. OpenBSD audit's the code BEFORE there is a problem. Debian's security is strictly reactionary. The last exploit for debian wasn't even 2 weeks ago. They don't tout this fact becuase it's not a fact. Backporting is simply patching a problem after it has been discovered.

Someone said that Debian was dying because it hasn't made a stable release.. Well, clueless troll you are! Run Unstable. It is _cutting edge_.

Unstable doesn't have xfree86 4.2.0 (which was released in january) or kde3 or gnome 2. Even more important unstable is not officially supported by the security team so they have no obligation to release fixes in a timely manner for it. So let me say what a clueless zealot and or blind sheep you are.

And every bug was fixed within a day.

Really? I seem to remember the last hole in mozilla 1.0 (which isn't even listed on the debian security page) was fixed only a week later, but since they didn't bother to tell anyone i guess it doesn't matter...

Also the security page is misleading becuase debian tries to hide the actual time it takes to respond by only posting "date reported" not the date it was fixed on. The last few exploits have taken debian days to backport, but since the security page only shows the date it was reported not when it was fixed there is no accurate record.

Now i am starting to get a picture of why the kiddies and zealots and whatnot think debian is so great. It's becuase they don't really have a clue.

Oh well, ignorance is bliss, so go on believing whatever you want to believe.

Re:Debian is awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, for someone running Debian since 1.3 you're pretty clueless.

Re:Debian is awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, you can be sure they will release a advisory AND a patch in a timely manner.

Really? ok let's check out the last security problem with apache and mod-ssl.

Ok, originally published to bugtraq on Jun 22, 2002.

Debian advisory is dated 2 Jul 2002

Pardon me, sir debian groupie, but that appears to be an almost 2 week differential.

SLS - SoftLanding (Linux) System

[Anonymous Coward]

From an old fart whose first Linux box was Yggdrasil, whose second was SLS, and who is now a Debian developer.

Re:SLS - SoftLanding (Linux) System

[Anonymous Coward]

It figures, but please, before then next DLUG meeting, try to get that smell of urine aout of your tweed jacket.

link to debian release article

[Wouter Van Hemel]

'sup with that session-id? Shouldn't you strip it from the link...

Re:link to debian release article

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, /. editor type people. Please remove that session ID, you're causing bad Drupal juice, I'm sure.

Re:link to debian release article

[Anonymous Coward]

More specifically it provides a logged in session to the person who submitted the link...

Debian technical committee

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does one see what's happening with the Debian technical committee?

Do they still exist? Can a project continue to work without a few senior/proven leaders?

Re:Debian technical committee

[Anonymous Coward]

See the mailing list and BTS.

wait.

[/dev/trash]

Who founded debian then? I'm confused.

Re:wait.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ian Murdock.

Re:How come debian sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more likely your kernel. Or you using the wrong one. Woody's installer has a kernel 2.4 option. Use it.

Re:Incase anyone is interested in trying out Debia

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the Linux projects over the years, Debian has progressed the least in terms of reliability and usable. My first exposure to Debian was 0.8. The clunky text based install went into an endless loop, and when you tried to break out of the loop, the install would rudely seg fault halfway through. When I wrote to report the bug to the Debian people, they sent back a nastygram and were totally unapologetic about their shitty software. Being a professional QA guy, I mentally rated Debian about as low on the QA scale as any piece of software I had ever examined.

Mind you, the bug is one thing but the attitude and culture of Debian are quite another. With such a horrible installer, why didn't the Debian people consider it job one to fix it? As a QA guy I think to myself, how dare they ship something so obviously flawed. What the hell are their priorities. It is still the same. There are outstanding bugs in Debian packages that were reported one and two years ago. Debian progress can only be measured on a glacial time scale.

And to be certain, things haven't changed much since my first encounter. Oh, the installer might be somewhat improved. But overall, Debian is an incoherent mishmash of half-baked packages, each with a zillion dependencies on other half-baked packages. Without a doubt, Debian is the most amateurish of all the Linux distributions. The Debian folks just don't give a damn. They live in their own detached world of deluded self-important unreality and are in complete denial on the needs of the average software user. If Debian just went away, it would be no great loss. Those considering Debian should reconsider. Give Gentoo a try. Or if you want something that just works without surprises, there is always Red Hat.

[YourMissionForToday]

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean "linux."

The obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Debian. I am a user. Without Ian and the other folks. I would be nowhere (using "%&8&$-Redhat) and go to dependency hell every other weekend.

Thank You!

What annoyes me about Debian folks

[LinuxGeek8]

rpm of course isn't anywhere near as snazzy as dpkg: you basically can't do remote, incremental upgrades without reboot

I always thought that it were the "losers" in de Debian userbase who don't know anything, but it seems that it even counts for project leaders.
Dpkg and rpm can do just about the same.
You can use a frontend for them to handle the dependencies, like apt or urpmi.
With rpm you can do incremental upgrades. I'm running Mandrake Cooker for about one and a half year, and it mostly works (ok, it's a development version of Mandrake).
Rpm can do post-install scripts and all the rest.
And you can upgrade from a gcc-2.96 distro to a gcc-3.1 distro.
It annoys me to hell when I read messages from Debian users on forums or on Usenet like "rpm sucks" and then try to explain why. Now, if even project leaders talk this kind of shit, it explains to me why the Debian userbase sucks.
Well, I can only assume he hasn't seen rpm in 5 years or so.....
That's the only excuse I can think of.

Re:What annoyes me about Debian folks

[castanaveras]

Are rpms still such a pain in the ass to create? With dpkg, all you need is a "make clean" and "make install" target, and 2 minutes with dpkg-make and you've got a deb of your own software.

And if you're packaging something that uses libaries, dpkg-buildpackage will automatically figure out what libraries you're using, what packages provided those libraries, and then automatically add them to the package's dependency list.

Combine that with the ability to easily make your own sources for apt, and making many workstations is as easy as creating one deb file that depends on all the packages you want to have on a workstation. Just add your local source to /etc/apt/sources.list on a new workstation, apt-get update, and apt-get install ourworkstationload and it downloads the latest version of everything and installs.

No hassle.

apt and dpkg rock compared to rpm.

Re:What annoyes me about Debian folks

[LinuxGeek8]

Are rpms still such a pain in the ass to create? With dpkg, all you need is a "make clean" and "make install" target, and 2 minutes with dpkg-make and you've got a deb of your own software.

In essence, Yes.
You make a specfile which mostly consists of macros; like %configure, %make, %makeinstall. Of course you have to specify other Metadata, like License, Source, Patch1, Patch2, Url. You can make a filelist yourself, where you choose which files end up in the package.

And if you're packaging something that uses libaries, dpkg-buildpackage will automatically figure out what libraries you're using, what packages provided those libraries, and then automatically add them to the package's dependency list.

Yup, rpm uses on mandrake the scripts /usr/lib/rpm/find-requires and find-provides. You can manually add Requires or Provides to the specfile, like Provides: smtpdaemon.
A difference is that rpm uses mostly files from libraries as dependencies, while dpkg uses packages. In the end that should just work the same.

Combine that with the ability to easily make your own sources for apt, and making many workstations is as easy as creating one deb file that depends on all the packages you want to have on a workstation. Just add your local source to /etc/apt/sources.list on a new workstation, apt-get update, and apt-get install ourworkstationload and it downloads the latest version of everything and installs.

Well, if you use apt together with rpm, you can just do the same I suppose.
If you use urpmi with rpm, you can use genhdlist which makes a hdlist.cz file with the rpm-headers. You can then use "urpmi.addmedia name ftp://ftp.bla.org/RPMS with hdlist.cz" and install packages from that repository.
And for the fake package, you can make a specfile without a real tar.gz and filelist, but with your own defined dependencies.

apt and dpkg rock compared to rpm.

There you go again.
You can compare dpkg and rpm.
And you can compare apt+dpkg and apt+rpm or urpmi+rpm.
You cannot compare apt to rpm, in the same sense that you cannot compare apt and dpkg.

Re:What annoyes me about Debian folks

[LinuxGeek8]

Q: Are rpms still such a pain in the ass to create?

A: In essence, Yes.

Duh, I meant No. And Yes, they are rather easy to build.
I never built deb packages though, so I can't really compare them.

Re:What annoyes me about Debian folks

[HiThere]

apt does appear to be easier to use than rpm. Not sure about urpmi.

The problem is with dependency resolution. rpm doesn't handle this, though, e.g., up2date attempts to handle it. Whether the reason is the care with which the pieces are built, or for some other reason rpms seem to break via dependency problems more often. (Of course, apt-get assumes an internet connection, etc.)

OTOH, as of Friday, Debian was having problems with validity checking (or possibly with packages?). To be specific, the fileutils module has been refusing to update itself due to validity check violations. Now this may well be because I don't really understand the system. I don't know. And I don't know how to find out.

OTOH, I've had this kind of problem before with rpms, though usually not with anything that seems to be a essential part of the system.

Still, with apt-get I was able to switch from Progeny to Debian testing to Debian stable and back to Debian testing. I was never able to do anything equivalent with rpms.

To my mind both systems have advantages. I haven't decided which I prefer. But there are a lot more packages that are available as rpms. And sometimes those are the ones I need. Compiling will usually work, but if there are unsatisfied dependencies, that conflict with other things that are installed... OUCH!

What I'm really hoping for is that the apt-get for rpms becomes more standardized. (And just why is alien being removed from the next version of Red Hat?)

Yggdrasil isn't dead

[by Steven Woston]

Yggdrasil isn't dead. I am running a Ydrassil system that I set up on a 386 DX-33 (8mb of RAM) box about 8 years ago. The great thing about any Linux distribution is that you can upgrade the software manually, thanks to the source being available, including the kernel and libraries. Of course, on the desktop side, the Microsoft Windows series is still King. In the future, expect many game servers to be written for Linux systems, with clients mainly available on Windows and Mac platforms.

Amazing Ian Jackson Trivia Factiod

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was at Cambridge, a couple of people living in the staircase opposite his knew him as "Nudey Man" because of his habit of greeting the new day by throwing open his curtains while naked.

Debian, Stability, Servers.

[castlan]

Debian Stable is perfect for servers because it is stable. By definition, a 2.2 kernel is more stable than a 2.4 kernel, and arguably a 2.0.39 kernel would be best if you want to minimize uncertainties and surprises. That would explain the continuing development into 2.0.40 and the 2.2.x tree.

Althogh I know of people running idle "servers" that have money to burn for bragging rights, most serious server administrators actually have a budget. Hobby or professional, that means that 1000bT and RAID aren't usually purchased until the previous component is actually a bottleneck. Does SAN really exist outside of the enterprise? How many home servers are on SMP capable motherboards (including the infamously unstable BP6)?

Perhaps your 120GB of data really is crap, which could explain why instead of being properly partitioned, it is existing on a filesystem almost certainly an order of magnitude larger than it should be (according to any Unix administration rule of thumb). If this is the case, then maybe you won't care about your files falling corrupt when your journalling FS sacrifices them for the sake of metadata cohesion. I'm certain that a home server has no feasible means of backup for such a filesystem, so if the data weren't crap, the filesystem should be at least as stable as ext2 with asynch writes disabled.

Again, the point of Debian Stable, in case you didn't catch it, is that it is stable. Many servers are values more for their robustness, which is a typical byproduct of maintained stability. Flaws are addressed by backporting fixes without new features exposing new flaws. The latest featured advances in Linux based systems are definitely useful, but contradictory to the goal of stability. Rather than mad haphazard patching, Debian suggests tracking their Stable tree, which maintains well tested patches that don't add features. If this is a public system, then security takes a justifiable front seat to stability, and so follow that tree as well.

As for your parting shots, Debian Stable is indeed suitable for large systems, especially when it is hard for physical RAM to reach "large" in personal class servers. RAM too large to autodetect in less-than-recent kernels is easily accessible by passing the value to the kernel during boot.
Multiprocessor systems are definitely useable, the latest advances in 2.5 don't negate the previously available SMP functionality of 2.2. If you are maxxing out your SMP hardware, maybe less stability would be a valuable tradeoff for improved SMP utilization. Is your home server stressing the locking schemes? Remeber, Seti@home won't benefit from improved SMP - you still have to run multiple instances of the client.
If you use "PC" in the Intel-x86 sense, then you couldn't be further from the mark. Debian Stable supports a wider range of platforms than any competing GNU distribution's latest release. Higher Debian releases support even more architectures. I don't think SGI or IBM servers could really fall within the scope of semi-pro or personal without aiming half a decade into the past.
As for attached storage, propose a home or semi-pro serving situation where there will be heavy writing activity which may benefit from a journaling FS so that I know where you are coming from. Most serving implies reading, not writing of files, and serving from a read-only filesystem might even be prudent. (Notice my previous comment about partitions.)
As for your pissant serving tasks, wouldn't stability still be top priority? To promote further discussion, please point out which distros handle routing and firewalling better then Debian, and just how so. Which features are better than stability?

Honestly, I don't think any distro yet available will stop you from shooting yourself in the foot if you insist on running a "server" without following standard administrative guidelines... what does your fstab look like? Does your primary serving task involve MPEG2 rips of LotR, Shindlers List and Dances with Wolves? Please, choose between personal, semi-pro, or enterprise class serving. (SAN? give me a break.)

Linux doesn't really stand a chance anymore

[castlan]

"Sure, Linux 2.2 is old, but it's heavily tested, and stable as hell". Fair enough, when when you start upgrading to a later brank of the kernel, you aren't running that "heavily tested stable as hell" kernel any more.... same level of testing and abuse...
stable but 3 years out of date.... yada yada.

If your hardware is brand new and only supported by unstable Linux, then it isn't considered stable hardware. If your Linux is brand new and only supported by unstable GNU then it isn't considered a stable kernel. If your server had more than one client, then you sould have been foolish to do all the hard of of upgrading, patching, etc etc yourself to the latest unstable Stable Linux. Much better to track a distribution's less volatile path towards your desired featureset even if it isn't "up to date." Most distributions of GNU have proven over time their priorities regarding stability versus featuritis. Choose one that reflects your comfort level.

The point of Debian is that you don't have to do the hard work of upgrading and patching yourself. When pointing at an appropriate APT repository, you type "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade". While Debian Potato isn't considered Stable (offically sanctioned by the Debian Project) with Linux 2.4, that doesn't mean that it isn't stable. As for the hard work of DIY, Google for "Debian Potato 2.4" and feel the pain of typing "apt-get dist-upgrade".