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Debian Freezing
An anonymous reader wrote in to alert us to that fact that
Debian is scheduled to Freeze this weekend. Soon there shall be spuds for everyone. This of course means that I will continue to recklessly apt-get upgrade on my laptop with reckless disregard for the safety of anyone within a 20 yard radius of my sofa.
Let's be more reckful with those recklesses.
I am actually interested in that does imbibing liquor cause an increase in metabolic or is it just any compound that can be converted into readily avaible energy?
cool! the freeze happens the same day as the beginning of the end! wee!
this crappy pun is germain how?
pardon my stupidity, but what is this freezing thing?
I am currently running redhat 6.0 but I am really looking for a purer strain of linux. I did almost break down and get a cheap cd of slink but I decided to stay put and compiled october gnome and enlightenment 0.16 and upgraded X. Given the X stuff is a few months older but gnome and e are looking a lot nicer. But upgrading myself I have a nicer desktop than the current 6.1 users- even after errata!!! Sometimes the best move is the one you do not make (but potato is mighty tempting to bite into).
Well the Lightwave Logo anyway. I wonder if anyone will come under fire for it..... Newtek
well that's the last time I actually post something with my login again about something I really care about. The people who are supposed to make things work correctly are just failing to do so.
and locked up harder than a rock! Can't wait to get back home and use my BSD box instead...
-- Phony BSD bigot
Yep, it's very possible, and very easy. You can either take the program you want to install and make a Debian package out of it (no more difficult than making an RPM, and many consider it much easier), or you can take a current Debian package for that program, get the source package, change it however you want to, build a new Debian binary (and/or source package), and 'dpkg -i ' to install it. Or, you can even set up your own custom Package listing on a local ftp/NFS server, and just 'apt-get install ' to have it download and install the program for you.
.deb is anywhere from a bit harder than rpm to phenomenally hard. And, if you want to be a good sysadmin, you really should read the 60-page Debian Packaging Manual & 45-page Debian Policy manual before building in order to prevent breakages. This may seem pretty bad; however, there are two pieces of good news:
.deb format. this is a quick hack, but works. just as good if not better than redhat's approaches, imho.
;-)
Hold on there, bucko. Some of what you're saying is true: you can make your own packages & install them, you can put them on ftp/nfs or even CD, multiple floppies, or whatever the heck else you waht; however, don't overstate the ease with which you can actually make the package. AFAIK, As of yet, depending upon whose opinion you're asking, making a
You will probably never need to make your own package. There are currently something like 2,225 packages in slink (2.1). i would estimate potato will have over 4,000. these include just about anything you could ever want. Debian developers are ussually very nice, and if there happens to be a package you have found in the current unstable branch with an important update or that is not available in stable, you can probably get them to package one for your stable distribution. Finally, there is the beautiful security.debian.org -- you can simply add that to your sources and any security updates will be downloaded automatically. And these updates come very soon after a security-threatening bug is found. this is one of the reasons debian is a bazillion times more secure thnan crappy RH, IMHO, even without a very competent sysadmin.
Also, you can use alien to convert an RPM to
In other words, it's not as easy as you think to keep your system up to day; it' s easier. For goodness sake, ditch redhat for all it is(n't) worth and get the only cool distro around
don't make the mistake of thinking, though, that you can't have a working system until it downloads 10 MB of stuff. I ussually do something like apt-get install lynx irc ssh etc. before i do the huge system install, that way i can actually use my system in the interim. very handy, although i think i agree it would be handier in terms of disk usage for apt to install the stuff in increments.
note that i stuck this in the wrong thread. oopsy =)
Cody
Gotta have a Woody.
Me too. But the installation program failed on booting on my smilebook 5100M. That's why I fell back to SuSE 6.2. Therefore: If you have a smilebook, think twice.
Anyone know why my download of the first debian (2.1r3) ISO freezes at 149Mb? I've tried multiple clients (and client computers) and multiple servers. reget gets nothing. Is this ISO corrupt? I'm running out of ideas.
Actually, IIRC my old MP training when I was young, dumb, and wondering what had possessed me to get into the Army in the first place, alcohol does just that, making hypothermia easier. Which was somewhat relevant with drunk privates in the German winter. We were told to get them inside first and make sure that they sobered up under observation before locking them up or dropping them off, depending on the COs preference.
1) Mention of ppc-specific kernel tree. Now, both the 2.2.13 and 2.3.2x kernel sources have /include/asm-ppc directories. . . I thought this stuff was officially all merged in by now? And anyway, the vger link only leads to sparc sources, buttressing my claim.
2) Incomplete installation documentation. Neither the PowerMac nor CHRP links work. Yeah, call me crazy, but since Apple is the biggest vendor in this space, I would think this would work. Does anybody have a boot disk for PowerMacs? I looked through the mailing list/FAQ/website, and couldn't find accurate info.
3) Similar bugs on the documentation page: An unreachable Debian/PowerPC Installation-Tips page and and also maligned Debian/PowerPC Installations-Documentation page .
HELP!!! Is this release really going to integrate PowerPC systems? And if so, is it going to usable on the same spectrum of machines that linuxppc is working (or not working, as the case may be) on?
Thanks for trying to help tho. Can you please post a link that actually works? Appreciated.
Debian has a package called "alien", which converts .rpm or .tar.gz into a .deb file ready for installation in the Debian system. It can also do the conversion the other way, converting .deb to .rpm.
Potatoes have a higher water:weight ratio than humans, and in most of the universe, it's cold enough to make them freeze. Here on Earth, it's a little harder (unless you live in Minnesota), but certainly not impossible. Obviously, Rob's donation bought them some refrigeration equipment at the very least. The only problem with frozen potatoes is their tendencies to be fried.
You mean apt-get clean, not autoclean... autoclean only deletes old versions (AFAIK), while he wants everything to be deleted, to free up the space.
The speed is, in some ways, dpkg's greatest failing (but maybe I'm just biased because I use it on a 16Mb box). The basic problem is that rpm uses a binary, hashed table database to store package state, while dpkg uses plain text, rfc822 style files. Binary db's can be edited in place, are quick to search, etc., etc., but if something breaks, you're utterly screwed. On the other hand, while plain text status information is slower to work with programmatically, I've at times opened /var/lib/dpkg/status up in a text editor and changed things around. Try doing that with rpm. While faster searching would be nice, I'll fight tooth and nail to keep the underlying information in human readable form. Also, tools like dlocate, grep-dctrl, dpkg-awk, and apt-cache can do many of the same things as a dpkg query much faster. It'd be nice, but in the mean time try dpkg --get-selections | grep install (slightly incorrect, in that it will show packages that have been marked for installation, but not yet installed), or dpkg-awk 'Status: installed' -- Package Version Description. Actually, I find it much easier in general to guess package names, because debian has policy on this. In general, libraries are in the package lib[g], where g means it's for libc6 and no g means it's for libc5. Unfortunately, this policy is at this time only a recommendation, and so not all packages follow it (like svgalibg1). In that case, though, the easiest thing is just to do apt-cache search , and you'll get a list of the form 'Package: Description' for all packages that match the regex. True, though I'm not sure how redhat can handle this any more gracefully. I'm guessing that Branden and Co. are looking to add this to apt-get, though, and rcw pointed out the fairly clean workaround.
The easiest and cleanest way to have all the packages from one box mirrored around to the others every night would be a cron job something like:
for MACHINE in ...; do
dpkg --get-selections | ssh $MACHINE 'dpkg --set-selections; apt-get -yqq dselect-upgrade'
done
I may have mixed up some syntax somewhere, but that's the basic idea. Then, each time the job runs, all the machines in ... will be synchronized with the packages on the machine running the script. For added points, use apt-move on /var/cache/apt/archives to set up a local mirror on the master machine, and the slave machines will be able to use it to download the packages. Or just use squid.
And that was why we were supposed to keep an eye on them -- to see if they were about to pass out and/or vomit and aspirate the vomit. We were trying to avoid discovering privatesicles the next morning in the POL dump. Mostly, we did a goof job. And by 1983, the average quality of the recruits was a little higher, so there was less of an issue ...
Well, yeah, I meant "good" job, but this was the US Army in 1980, so a "goof job" would have been equally applicable ...
I have also had zero success with 2.x versions of gdm. I've submitted bug reports but I've yet to get a response.
Wouldn't be reverse? but wait, then... never mind. Dselect is a nice frontend to apt, dpkg, and other stuff. Personally, I don't see what the problem is? Although I am now curious about using the console tools.
*** \broken has been idle 0 seconds
You don't need to install LinuxPPC first; just boot from the live image (you can get it from ftp.linuxppc.org), partition your disk, mke2fs, tar xzf base2_2.tgz, rename unconfigured.sh, create resolve.conf, chroot to the new disk, set up network, run dselect, and hit install.
rpm is based on cpio isn't it?
get the live image URL and file name please
tar xzf base2_2.tgz into what directory? Where do I get the "base2_2.tgz" file?
rename unconfigured.sh, to what?
create resolve.conf, Assuming with the usual, local-network-specific DNS info?
choot to the new disk, "new disk??" this is very unclear.
set up network, ?? OK, assuming normal static ip stuff.
run dselect, and hit install. OK from here.
do you have libpam0g, libpam-runtime, and libpam-modules installed? i don't think gdm depends on the latter, but it won't work without libpam-modules (is this a bug?)
I'm sure the debian group has had endless debates about this, but I've never seen it answered in a FAQ, so here goes...
Why does debian use a conventional "release everything at once" method for a system composed of over 2000 mostly independent packages?
In other words, if Xapp 3.2 comes out the day after debian releases debian 2.1, why does it take until debian 2.2 for Xapp 3.2 to show up in "stable"?
It seems to me that most of the packages could be checked in to unstable, screened for bugs & stuff, then promoted to stable. Only the main infrastructure stuff, like installation and admin packages would really have to follow a more conventional release process.
I'm sure debian has good reasons for this, I just don't know what they are and I'm hesitant to bring it up on any debian lists 'cuz I'm sure it must be a FAQ...
Someone has to hold up dselects flag :) ;). sorting after required/important/standard/etc. is far better then just sorting after net/develop/etc. like other distros do. :)
it is *great* if u once understood how the packages are listed
and, if you just cant find the package, there is a search function.
Regarding the "system profiles", I hadn't thought of this, but couldn't you create your own custom profile? None of those profiles were quite right for me so I did it manually. If I had to do 13 machines, though, I would probably try to create a profile (or make do with one that existed). It seems better than scrolling through 2,256 packages in dselect 13 times. If not check out the profiles here (section 4.2): http://www.DEBIAN.ORG/releases/slink/i386/ch-parti tioning.en.html
One nice hint:
1. Set up your first box just the way you like it.
2. Run "dpkg --get-selections" on it and capture the results to a file.
3. On your other boxes, after installing the base system, run "dpkg --set-selections" on the file.
Now "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" will pull all the same packages as the first box.
Liquid He is far too expensive, I can get liquid Nitrogen for about 50p a pint, which should be plenty.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I have to try this:
:)
1. Get a (real) potato
2. Put it in liquid Nitrogen for about an hour
3. Drop it.
I expect it'll be pretty shatter resistant, just like the debian potato. I shall report here
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Maybe he meant to use the scotch to help start a fire with the blanket. A workable short term solution....
The downside is that apt doesn't actually install anything until the download is complete. IMHO this is broken, because it can require enormous amounts of disk space. apt should be smart enough to get all the dependencies for a package and then install it immediately.
The upside is that apt is smart enough to figure out the dependencies, download and install everything for you. Automatically. Couldn't be more painless.
--
--
Note that "unstable" really isn't all that unstable, working-wise. Debian has been the most stable, reliable distribution I've ever used. "unstable" is called that mostly because the packages change daily -- or hourly. They haven't been fully tested with the rest of the system, but they work 99% of the time anyway. "stable" tends to get out of date, so I've kept my system in line with "unstable" and have had zero problems.
In my experience, potato has been far more stable than any other distro I've run (haven't tried the latest Red Hats or Mandrake yet, though).
The only drawback with Debian for me was having to sit through the install and answer questions for many packages. That is being worked on however. I don't know what the status for potato is. Can one of the developers comment?
--
I managed to get LinuxPPC 1999 into fairly workable shape, but would like to be running Debian, the PPC version. Does anybody have any feedback on whether that architecture is in vaguely workable condition? I'd be running it on a 9500 powermac with a G3 card in it, in limited drive space. Is it something anybody is actually using, or is it still mostly hypothetical? If it matters, I would need X and ADB support (preferably ability to map missing mousebuttons to Fkeys) but will not be wanting a Linux desktop environment such as Gnome. (Tried that w. LinuxPPC1999 and didn't like it.) :)
Any Mac potatoes out there running Debian?
Because they didn't anticipate that some other entity would want to use their packaging system when they chose the name?
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
for those running Slink who don't want to destroy their system.
Hope this helps (and don't let those spud gun pellets moulder down the side of the sofa)...
--
Xenu loves you!
Also note that alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water, so if you leave it exposed to the elements you may drink a liquid that is below freezing. Talk about your brain freeze...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yes it is.
It probably won't happen, because one of the people who think it's too early is our Project Leader, Wichert Akkerman.
The opinion of the Project Leader is irrelevant (well, it's as relevant as the opinion of any individual developer). He can't overturn a decision made by one of his delegates (see the Constitution, point 8.2).
Yes, I am leaking information here.
Well, next time please be sure to leak correct information :-)
Debian creates CD-ROM images for stable releases only. You can find more information in the Debian CD image site. If you want to participate in testing new releases (including new CD images), please join the debian-testing list (see the subscription information).
You'd probably like it even better if you did a pure debian install, instead of mixing and matching. I think dpkg is WAY nicer than rpm. Also, I recommend NOT using dselect (just skip the dselect step), dist-upgrade to potato, install console-apt and install your packages that way. dselect gave me nothing but problems the one time I tried to use it (I had to go back and reinstall - it decided to start removing EVERYTHING after I told it to install some packages!).
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Cool, bring it on Debian!
I haven't done it with apt, but I used to do it on 486 installs with dselect.
Simply go to the directory where it stores the downloads, and type
dpkg -iGER *
which causes it to install anything it can, recursively through the directory structure, but skipping packages already installed. Dpkg won't install anything whose dependencies are not met.
I did it not for download speed, but because some of the packages took so long to install on a 486/33.
You could then try this same command in directories, and delete everthing if it came back saying they were all already installed.
I took a look at this last week with intent to turn a "partly RHAT 5.0, 5.1, and other stuff" box into a Debian system.
Unfortunately, the process is fairly dependent on some particular packages (notably libg++ ) and it looks like it is a distinctly nontrivial process to make this work in practice.
The second problem that you'll hit is that you'll wind up with a whole lot of "cruft," library-like stuff hiding here and there larding up your filesystem.
My inclination would be, instead, to:
At this point, the box happens to be running RHAT 6.1; there is a good likelihood that I'll set up some even "smarter" cfengine rules than I have now and run the box through a few distributions just for the sake of regaining familiarity before letting it settle down with Debian.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
There's not a precise equivalent to Kickstart; what I would do, if I wanted 13 identical boxes, would be:
- Pick one box as a "master," and install everything that you want installed on it.
- Then, add
/var/cache/apt/archives to /etc/exports so that it gets exported to other machines that want it. - Install the "base" Debian stuff (about 6 floppies worth of stuff) on those other machines.
- Copy over some base networking files ( e.g. -
/etc/hosts , /etc/fstab and such) and drop them into place so that each machine has some basic common configuration. - Mount the relevant filesystems on the remote machines, and then have them install via: # dpkg -i
/mnt/common-apt-cache/*.deb - It would make a lot of sense to either build a
.deb package containing any common config scripts/files or provide a common NFS-mounted "export" directory like the "apt package archive" as a conduit to push stuff to the remote boxes. - Set up a cron job on each box that (let's say) runs a script in
/mnt/common-config/ that installs any .deb files in /mnt/common-apt-cache/ that are less than a day old (or check against what's installed).
This is definitely no harder to automate on Debian than it is on RPM-based distributions, and could actually be easier as you could set up a local "package archive" for the whole set of packages and use apt-get hitting a local server rather than a remote one to keep all of the packages up-to-date with what you want on them.I would mount my Debian CD on a separate box and download via HTTP; this has the result of pushing all the packages that got installed into /var/cache/apt/archives
I would tend to want to use cfengine for this; I have yet to get it configured to distribute files itself, which is something it claims to be able to do...
Inserting extra needed lines in config files like /etc/fstab is the sort of thing that cfengine is ideal for...
This gets all the machines to have the "common" stuff.
I would most definitely try to implement this using cfengine as it's designed to do this sort of thing...
Look at cfengine; the Usenix journal ;login has had a series on it recently; it is really powerful.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
What's in a name? RPM is a common acronym, re-used many times. (Revs Per Minute being perhaps the best-known.) On the other hand, I do agree that a package manager should be distinct from a distribution. The code =IS= open-source, so the distribution cannot claim ownership.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This really isn't the case; there's no "reliance" going on here. Think of the extension as "the package management system developed by the Debian group". Other people are free to use the format and tools, not to mention modifying the tools (standard free/open source spiel...)
Yes, that's how we have been doing freezes since the paleozoic. The problem now is that there is too much stuff in Incoming. Check it out if you wish, some sites mirror Incoming.
Basically the point is that some (me included) don't want to freeze without working boot-floppies (the installation program suite, for those not too deep into Debian) and with a lot of new packages stuck in Incoming.
(Yes, I am leaking information here. But my intention is to fix another lack, because a leak of correct information is IMHO better than a leak of misinformation.
I just finished reading the distribution howto by Eric Raymond - mostly because I've been thinking about switching distributions. The one thing that made me really sad is Eric's comments about the Redhat Package Manager, "The big selling point of this distribution is RPM, the Red Hat Package Manager. This piece of software is a remarkable advance; it allows you to cleanly install and de-install applications and operating-system components, including the kernel and OS base itself. RPM is now used as well by essentially all other distributions except Debian."
.deb?! Why did these two great distributions make their package management systems so proprietary? Not in the sense of non-openness, but in the sense that other distributions having to rely on Redhat or Debian for their package management systems.
What bothered me was the name of the Redhat Package Manager. If Redhat wanted everyone to use it why not seperate itself from the product name. Anyways, I noticed that many other distributions do use rpms. It makes me equally sad that Debian, seemingly, has a more advanced package deployment, grouping system - but they had to go and make the extension
Oh wo is me. When will the LSB do something?
This is all probably flame-baiting, off-topic nonsense. Someone point me to slackware, are they still using tar.gz as their package managing system?
Joseph Elwell.
I find this great in that Debian has been active lately, more active than before. Debian now has backing and you can purchase boxed versions, and with this freeze, Debian will continue to be stronger and stronger. I was very suprised by the quantity of bugs squashed in just one day. Great work!
--
Scott Miga
...not yet running Debian, but wanting to, is there an FTP site(s) which will more than likely have an .ISO available? Thanks in advance.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
As a user of potato for a long time now, I've gotta say I think this is a great thing. I still have never seen an Operating System (or distro) as easy to administer, maintain, and upgrade, than a Debian box.
;-)
On another note, I noticed after a recent update that there is currently around 4500 software packages in the Debian repository. I wonder, is Debian now the largest linux Distro? Perhaps Linux support for DVD is coming none-too-soon, we might need it for Debian.
Topher
1.) Does Debian have any system install automation like Redhat's kickstart?
;-)
/etc/apt/sources.list to point to the potato directories, and I type 'apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade'. Then, I sit back and wait for it to tell me that it's finished. That's it. No rebooting, no hassle, just sweet and worry free. ;-)
This I can't answer for sure, because I haven't had occasion to try it, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing about this capability for Debian.
2.) How good is the Debian package management?
To put it simply, Debian's package management is the best available anywhere. It will retrieve packages for you, handle dependancies, handle updates, and overall, just work amazingly. It basically does it all.
For example, if I had a Red Hat 5.2 box, and I wanted to upgrade it to Red Hat 6.0, the most common upgrade path is to insert the 6.0 CD, reboot my computer, and tell it to upgrade the current install.
To upgrade a Debian 2.1 system to Debian 2.2, I change a few lines in
I would like to use it with the 13 boxes as well...Right now if I need to update something on the boxes I make an rpm, put it in a certain directory, and it installs itself that night. Would something like that be possible in debian?
Yep, it's very possible, and very easy. You can either take the program you want to install and make a Debian package out of it (no more difficult than making an RPM, and many consider it much easier), or you can take a current Debian package for that program, get the source package, change it however you want to, build a new Debian binary (and/or source package), and 'dpkg -i ' to install it. Or, you can even set up your own custom Package listing on a local ftp/NFS server, and just 'apt-get install ' to have it download and install the program for you.
To give you one last example of how well Debian's package management is, I know someone who set things up so that when he attempted to upgrade a single package, Debian's package utility had to go out, get all the dependancies, plus those things the dependancies depended on, etc, and install it all in the proper order. He ended up having 457 packages updated, all at once, all with that one command. And it went without a single hitch or problem anywhere.
Topher
http://www.geocit ies.com/ResearchTriangle/3328/rh5todeb-howto.txt
Google is good! "convert debian redhat", "I'm feeling lucky", Bam.
OK, I'll put in a few harsh words :) (These are meant as constructive criticisms, I'm a Debian user but dpkg has some deficiencies)
1) Speed - RPM is an order of magnitude faster at doing queries
2) Why does dpkg not offer a way to view untruncated package names with -l ?
3) Package names are goofy. In redhat it's easy to guess what a package name would be. apt-get kicks ass but would be even better if I could say "apt-get install svgalib" rather than having to know that the svgalib package name is really "svgalibg1"
4) The fact that the install is based on apt-get makes it somewhat uncomfortable to install on a space-limitted machine, since the install insists on downloading all packages before it starts installing them. Use CD, right? Ergh, what if this is a laptop or something w/o a CD-Rom.
Those are my big complaints. Overall Debian is excellent however. I probably wouldn't recommend it to a newbie, but if you're pretty comfortable with Linux/Unix you should try Debian out. (I used Slackware for 2 years or so, Redhat for about 3.5 and I switched to Debian about 6 months ago)
I have my dial-on-demand gateway running Squid (and Junkbuster). One machine will perform the update, using HTTP as the apt-get method. I have an http_proxy environment variable pointing to Squid. After that machine finishes its update, I run it on the rest. Subsequent updates pull from the Squid cache, avoiding the modem.
tonight I shall run apt-get with abandon from all my Deb boxen
Bad idea.
a) The freeze isn't till this weekend
b) A freeze doesn't mean it's gotten any better. Slink had a number of bugs that were both created and fixed in freeze.
If you want Stable, wait till the release. Of course, I'm running potato now myself, and am not having any trouble...
Dselect IS your friend, specially when running unstable.
I gotta agree here. apt-get is fine for installing single packages, or for doing updates off of security.debian.org, but for unstable, I want dselect. I like to have the list of new packages available...
Water, or anything else, can never be at exactly
0 degrees Kelvin.
What you are refering to is the triple point of
water, were all three states coexist. (Just
like at 32 F water can be either liquid or
solid.) The triple point of water occurs at
273.16 and when the pressure is equal to the
vapor pressures of the solid and liquid state
(don't remember what it is, but it's near
vacuum.)
Incidentally, the freezing point of water is
273.15 K.
Ponder,
/broken is an entity
What shall be the code name of the next debian unstable distribution? have we run out of all cool toy story names? (oh toy story 2 is on the horizon). How about cowboy, or maybe a little twist, gunslinger! ha! space dude sounds fun.. or maybe extraterristal. Debian ET sounds nice too.
Any ideas as to what it should be called?
Yes
--
Only superfluid liquid helium climbs up! You have
to use a vacuum pump to reduce the pressure and
the boiling point below 2.2 K. A nice feature of
superfluid helium is, that it doesn't "boil"
anymore. Its heat conductivity is next to infinity and any helium vaporizes from the surface.
BTW: Liquid helium is only very expensive if you are not able to recycle it.
Frank Pobell: Matter and Methods at Low Temperatures (Springer) is a really nice book
dealing with ordinary He and all the stuff for
temperatures 1K
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 23:36:59 +0100
From: Richard Braakman
To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org
Subject: Status of Potato
(Please send followups to debian-devel, not debian-devel-announce)
Potato looks ready to freeze. Its primary goals have been achieved,
and the only things left to do are to finish the bootdisks and fix
lots of bugs. I think it is advisable to freeze now, before we
start major new developments in potato.
Last weekend has shown that the bug count can be reduced rapidly
in intense sessions. We'll need more of those, and probably a large
number of packages will also have to be removed from frozen.
The freeze will be the coming weekend, on Sunday, November 7th.
Before the freeze, we will have to deal with the backlog in Incoming
somehow. There are more than 200 packages in it now and it's growing.
Help is on the way, but probably not in time. In any case, I do not
think it is wise to install a hundred new packages just before the
freeze! My plan is to handle all the packages that fix bugs, and
leave the rest for the new unstable.
After the freeze, I expect it will take a week or two for frozen to
settle down. A lot of bugs can be fixed in that time. This period
will be similar to the traditional freeze.
Then we can start with Test Cycles. These will address the problems
we had with the previous two freezes. A Test Cycle looks like this:
1. Boot disks and CD images are created.
2. The distribution is tested for a fixed amount of time. No changes
of any kind will be made to frozen during this time. Fixes for
problems that are discovered will of course be prepared, but they
will not be installed yet.
3. The results are evaluated. If the distribution is good enough to
release, it is released as it is.
4. Otherwise, fixes are installed, and if necessary, extra time is
taken to fix the problems.
5. New boot disks and CD images are created, and the cycle begins again.
Richard Braakman
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
OK, I'm one of those insane people who downloads each RedHat release over a modem.
It's actually quite painless, I use wget -c and over the course of a few nights I can suck down the entire thing over my blazing fast 33.6K line.
My question is this: Does the Debian package manager have support for partial and interrupted upgrades? It would be nice to upgrade my system a little bit at a time, because I'd be doing it over a modem. Is that possible? I'd also like to do it automatically. I don't want to have to have the package manager list out the dependencies so I would have to download and install the packages manually.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Oh, this is beautiful. Thanks for all the great information. I think that I will get debian going as my system of choice. I've ordered a CD for my first Debian install, but it's great to know that future upgrades can be done automatically, and fairly painlessly through a modem.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I have always wanted to try Debian but never broke down and did so. I have a couple of questions that I was hoping someone could answer...
1.) Does Debian have any system install automation like Redhat's kickstart?
If I were to start using Debian, I would start USING Debian. Which means I would have to install it on 13 machines, and I don't want to set down and pick packages for each.
2.) How good is the Debian package management?
I would like to use it with the 13 boxes as well... Right now if I need to update something on the boxes I make an rpm, put it in a certain directory, and it installs itself that night. Would something like that be possible in debian?
Thanks ahead of time for anyone's input...
I believe they are working on making apt smart enough to download smaller chunks and install those chunks.
I don't remember the details, but I'm sure you can find them in the Debian mailing list archives somewhere.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Overall it works, but there are a couple of problems to beware of:
l s.tar.gz /etc/{passwd,group}files in the tarball were very useful though. Heed this note from the mini-howto's author: Trouble! convert passwd and group first, before ever installing anything debian related using dpkg. Otherwise the ownerships will be almost irrecoverably incorrect.
/usr' or something). /var/cache/apt/archives/
:)
.debian.org/debian/project/dpkg/
::
/usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf.gz /usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf /etc/apt/apt.conf
// Proxy::http.us.debian.org "DIRECT";
/usr in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab"
/usr to be it's own partition, which it isn't on my machine. Anyhow, at this point dselect is effectively dead in the water.
/var/cache/apt/archives, it should have all of your downloaded .deb packages. Then run:
/var/cache/apt/archives
.deb's didn't install because of failed dependencies and 8 packages unpacked but didn't finish installing. From here it was a fairly simple matter of running
;-)
passwd / group file automagic rollover http://www.g eocities.com/ResearchTriangle/3328/conversion-too
I didn't end up using the script since I only had two users to worry about. I did look it over, but I don't know enough perl to make it sing. The
dselect|apt-get don't work completely
-probably because my partition setup is unexpected, they always crash at the install phase ('unable to remount
That's okay, use apt-get or dselect to download the packages, then cd to
and use 'dpkg --install *.deb'. Keep an eye on the console for the 20-30 packages you will have to reinstall because of broken dependencies (here's where it is useful to do this over a telnet session so you can log all the screen output).
Here are my notes left over from doing my RH6.0 to Deb2.1 conversion:
-----[snip]------
>If you would, could you let me know how the conversion goes?
Well, I think I'm done, but I'm not sure if I broke anything or not. I imagine there will be few toys on the floor to trip over.
(btw, I completely ignored version numbers for everything)
I did not take any safety precautions. The computer I'm playing with has no important information on it. I use solely for experimenting with and learning Linux. I fully expect it to blow it up non-recoverably at some point.
Step (1)
- no problem except for the passwd/group thing (not having a debian version available); I just skipped that and came back to it later
(2) libstdc++ was already installed
(4) took me awhile, but I eventually found a nondebbin version of dpkg at
ftp://ftp. [mirror]
(8) This is the order that worked for me, but I had to try it a bunch of times so it shouldn' be considered definitive:
$ dpkg --force-depends --install libldso*
$ dpkg --force-depends --install libncurses*
$ dpkg --force-depends --install libstdc++
$ dpkg --force-depends --install ldso
$ dpkg --force-depends --install libc6
; core dumped after a segmentation fault at this point almost any command will segfault, even ls and rm. Don't worry All-Is-Not-Lost! (but I sure thought I was!!!)
$ ldconfig
; *wait* for ldconfig to exit, it really is busy doing something
$ dpkg --force-depends --install libc6
$ dpkg --force-depends --install dpkg
$ dpkg --configure dpkg
* these files are new (not mentioned in the HowTo). The best way to make sure you get what you need is to go to
http://debian.org/distrib/packages
and search for the package you are looking for. It will also give the dependencies, download them too.
(10) Skip this step for an http/ftp install
(11.2) ---==---
$ dselect
- choost Apt for access method, see bottom description panel for firewall/proxy setup
:: Proxy Setup (skip if you don't have one)
- if you have to setup proxies, *exit* not suspend dselect otherwise your changes will have no effect.
First try:
$ http_proxy="http://your.firewall.here:port/"
This is important for us MS weenies: don't use the command:
$ set http_proxy=bklah blah blah
because it's not the same as the previous one. I don't want to talk about how long it took me to figure this out.
- rerun dselect and try and Update, if the main menu returns too quickly your proxy is probably not working. Exit again and try this:
$ gunzip
$ cp
and edit apt.conf for your particular firewall setup. Hopefully you know a bit about how proxies work. I only had to change one line:
Proxy "http://firewall.gov.yk.ca:80/";
and comment out the following one (the 2 '//'):
- run deselect again and [U]pdate. This is where it started working for me.
(11.3)
- dselect > Update downloaded about 40mb and then I ran into my next problem:
"mount: can't find
I presume because the script is expecting
Look for
$ cd
$ dpkg --install *
and go get a coffee. But keep an eye on the machine because you'll have to answer a few prompts.
On my box, 5
$ dpkg --install some.pack.age.0.10.deb
and figuring out from the error messages what it needs to be installed first (for the 5). And then running
$ dpkg --configure
for the 8 incomplete installs.
that's all folks.
=========================
do you know where the dselect/dpkg logs are kept?
A few messages scrolled by of things to do and programs to run at a later date, but I don't remember them all...
Oh yeah, there's one more juicy tidbit: I never once layed a finger on my computer. I did all of this from remote using telnet/ssh and VNC.
thanks for your help Brock,
-matt
-----[snip]------
Asking for highly specific technical advice in the middle of a thread on slashdot is likely a waste of time. And technically it is somewhat off-topic.
If you think the gdm package has a bug, go ahead and file a bug report.
If you think you may need some help, or don't fully understand why gdm is doing what it's doing, then you should probably try asking on the debian-user mailing list.
(I don't use gdm, so I can't answer any questions about it.)
If dpkg can't purge a package you've got installed, typically this is because either
In any event, there's really nothing we can do without at least seeing the error message you're getting.
However, rather than posting the errors here, I recommend asking on debian-user.
Perhaps the proliferation of commercial Debian-based products will help to get the system tested and released by the end of the year... (please, please....) Speaking of which, what kind of support (if any) have those commercial distributions actually provided support to the process of solidifying Debian 2.2?
Meanwhile, I guess those of us who mercilessly keep our machines on the bleeding edge regardless of the consequences will need to get around to reporting the breakages (mea culpa). Stability actually looks really good so far, though.
In short, I'm excited. A new release, a new bleeding edge, a new world of pain for my computers!
The question is, how many DVD's will be needed for the base Debain 2.2 distribution?
Actually, imbibing alchohol will slow your metabolism....
But you are missing the point. The idea stated by mmmmbeer is to "carry a bottle of scotch".
Obviously, the thinking is as follows:
The idea is to carry with you additional mass (here, the bottle of scotch), causing you to exert the extra effort needed to carry the bottle, which will result in additional energy being released by your body, which becomes trapped in the insulating layers of dress and the blanket, thus creating an environment conducive to retaining your body heat.
You see, in this way, the bottle of scotch makes you more comfortable despite the freeze. However, I'm not qualified to say whether the same principle will apply to Debain's Potato distribution; that calls for the opinion of a biotechnologist.
Since then, I have never been happier with any distro I've ever tried. Debian is absolutely wonderful, especially since I don't have to deal with dselect anymore (a simple dpkg --install on a deb will install it, similar to using rpm)
Dselect IS your friend, specially when running unstable. dpkg is a low level tool! To install something with dpkg you have to download it and then install it with dpkg. Dselect, searches for packages, gives their descriptions, sorts the dependecies downloads and installs everything, you NEVER have to download a deb by hand, ever.
Learn how to use dselect. I know that some people will start ranting that apt-get is better. Apt-get is not a dselect replacement. apt-get was designed to be used with dselect or console-apt(still very alpha) as frontend. There are many things that apt-get and dpkg won't do easily for you. Dselect was meant to make things easier. LEARN HOW TP USE IT.
I just hope the potato freeze will not take as long as slink. When slink froze it had ~150 release critical bugs, ~2000 packages, 4 architectures. It took about +4 months from freeze to release. Now, potato has +3000 packages, 5 architectures that are scheduled to release and ~230 relese critical bugs. I just home I will not have to wait for another 5 months for potato release, like it was with slink...
Yes, if you interrupt download you can continue later. Doing ftp installs over modem is much more convenient, you don't have to download "ALL for the stu'' only package that you need. AFAIK, only Debian and FreeBSD can do that ...
I had been running several RedHat boxes (I think "boxen" sounds stupid :-) over the last couple years, with some Slackware before that, and I had been hearing some very good things about Debian, but I had also been hearing some bad things - mainly about dselect. I decided to wipe one of my RedHat boxes and try out Debian, so I ordered Slink from CheapBytes a few weeks ago.
After struggling with dselect (yes, it has really earned its reputation) for an hour, I finally got the system installed. I started playing around with it, and was having some problems - mainly that the programs which I was too lazy to download and had just copied from my roommate's RedHat 6 box just segfaulted on startup! I was getting very frustrated with this and was about to give up and reinstall RedHat 6 when I noticed that it was only using glibc 2.0.7, which RedHat 6 uses glibc 2.1. So I downloaded the debs of glibc 2.1 from the potato distribution, installed them, and all of a sudden everything worked perfectly.
Since then, I have never been happier with any distro I've ever tried. Debian is absolutely wonderful, especially since I don't have to deal with dselect anymore (a simple dpkg --install on a deb will install it, similar to using rpm) I would definately recommend it to anybody who has a decent amount of experience using Linux (or UNIX in general) and is less than satisfied with RedHat. But I didn't even know that I was less than satisfied until I tried something else. I highly recommend it, and am definately going to try out potato once it's stable (probably on my Alpha as well... it's running RedHat 5.1 right now and is in dire need of an upgrade)
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
True. Debian's state structures need to be overhauled (they are currently rfc822-style plaintext records as opposed to redhat's hashed db) but that must be done the Right Way(tm) - the state information is simply too important.
Why does dpkg not offer a way to view untruncated package names with -l ?
-l isn't meant to be used in scripts and the like. Try --get-selections.
Package names are goofy. In redhat it's easy to guess what a package name would be. apt-get kicks ass but would be even better if I could say "apt-get install svgalib" rather than having to know that the svgalib package name is really "svgalibg1"
Debian took the approach of having separate packages for incompatible library versions, that can both be installed simultaneously. Redhat took the approach of creating separate install and upgrade commands, so you can have multiple versions of the same package installed at the same time. Personally I like Debian's approach, and it makes tools like apt-get easier to implement. You can always go into dselect, type /svga, and find it thataway.
The fact that the install is based on apt-get makes it somewhat uncomfortable to install on a space-limitted machine, since the install insists on downloading all packages before it starts installing them. Use CD, right? Ergh, what if this is a laptop or something w/o a CD-Rom.
Also, anything that uses a file:/ url in sources.list won't be cached - that includes remote filesystems such as nfs or smb.
I dunno, I've found laptops without either some form of network connectivity or cdrom drives rather useless.
I *think* what happens is that, when cold, your body tries to keep the warm blood in the core of your body. It does this by constricting the arteries and capillaries in your limbs, reducing blood flow through them. Alchohol counters this effect and causes the capillaries to expand again. So, warm blood flows from your core into your limbs and makes you feel warm. Unfortunately, this also means that the cold blood that was trapped in your limbs gets circulated to your core, which can drop your core temperature...a Bad Thing. So, the warmth is only an illusion.
Hopefully someone with more bio can elucidate further...
(slightly offtopic)
I wonder how much more RedHat could make if they switched to dpkg (in a few quarters, once most of the few big deficiencies of dpkg are resolved). I know I refuse to refer people to the RedHat distro for the sole reason that I think RPM sucks. If RedHat used dpkg, I'd refer people to it (and probably buy it myself, just to support them). Anyone else doing the same thing?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
I saw a post on list.debian.org from the PPC mailing list with install instructions. Basically you need to install linuxppc first, then dump the debian base2_2.tar.gz file on top of it after alot of tweaking you can run apt and install the rest of the system.
It is very usable, but a little more behind then the other platforms package wise. feel free to email me if you have any questions: mcorde61@maine.edu
Rock! tonight I shall run apt-get with abandon from all my Deb boxen, and I shall rejoice!
.sig: Now legally binding!
I have spent time with gnome and wondered about gdm. I installed the newest version for quite a while and have never had any success with it. It complains saying "module unknown" whenever I try to login as any user at the login prompt. And nothing I do seems to help. It appears to be that the package uses pam to get its data for logins or something but that may not be the problem. Oh that and I have some packages that refuse to purge themselves from my system (with dpkg --purge "package name").
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
1. They have to my knowledge "system profiles" or the type of installation that you would like say something for developers, servers, standard workstations, etc
2. Quite excellent if you use packages that aren't too beta. Usually most of even the really far out pre alpha stuff usually works fine. Much better that a comparative level in Red Hat. As Rob mentioned apt-get can remotely update the system overnight or anytime with a cron job or such. I actually have never yet had to destroy my debian partition to upgrade from slink to any of the unstable stuff so I guess that says something.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Hey ppl
Eight or so months ago I happened across a simple text file at the Debian website that described in depth how to convert one's system to Debian from RH. It seems to have completely disappeared, probably due to widening gaps between D and RH (2.2.x, updates to X, etc). If *ANYONE* has the slightest idea where I can find it please please PLEASE post a reply up here or to me personally. I'm willing to wager many people would love to see this file back up.
Cheers
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Package name changed, try instead: apt-get install console-apt
Well, i dotn know how every other distro does it, but ive never heard a harsh word with regard to debians package managment, indeed its probably debians strongest point. You could easy make a cron job to automatically check for and install updated packages, with the need for you to dod anything. For your 1st question, im not sure exactly, i think you can define a custom group of packages, so you should be able to move this around, never done it or really looked into that myself. You could try searching one of the Debian Mail list Archives
Don't forget, it can also help you pass out in the snow. That can kill you even if it isn't that cold otherwise. But lets face it, the morning after having a bunch of scotch, don't you tend to wish you'd frozen to death (or been beaten to death, or shot, or something)?
We're freezing here, too. It should do what I do. Get a warm blanket, dress in layers, and always carry a bottle of scotch. That'll keep you warm when it's freezing. :)
There are, in fact, Debian images for download. However, currently, they only have the stable releases for download (slink is the current, some also have the previous version, hamm)... When potato finally goes gold (after the feature freeze and bug-testing periods) it will be posted too. The mirrors list can always be found at: http://cdimage.debian.org/ftp-mirrors.html Hope this helps.
Basically, the 'freeze' means that there will be no new features added to the distribution, and that they will begin a rigorous testing and bug-hunting period, wherein they attempt to make it even more bug-free and tightly integrated than before. Potato (Debian 2.2) should go gold within a couple (few?) months after the freeze, which is good news to all the paranoid people who've been running slink all this time because they were affraid to run 'unstable'... I'm not one of those. I've found potato to be more 'stable' than most commercial dists already (RH6, etc)... Nonetheless, this is good news. :)