debian-faq: Patch3 to update outdated information
Hello,
now the third patch to address more invasive things:
- I have updated info on release architectures
- I removed/changed paragraphs about floppies (still someone using them? :-) )
- I changed the description of apt (copied from official package-description
from packages.debian.org)
- I added a mention of UTF-8
- Should we remove docu on dselect? (outdated tool)
That would also mean the removal of docu about dpkg-mountable.
- Should we no longer mention the outdated repository-howto?
- What about the modconf package/mechanism? Still required? Still existing?
A patch as a proposal is attached.
Review and comments are here *really* wanted!
Holger
--
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Created with Sylpheed 3.5.0 under
D E B I A N L I N U X 8 . 0 " J E S S I E " .
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Index: compat.sgml
===================================================================
--- compat.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ compat.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -19,6 +19,8 @@
<item><em/amd64/: this covers systems based on AMD 64bit CPUs with AMD64 extension
and all Intel CPUs with EM64T extension, and a common 64bit userspace.
+<item><em/arm64/: supports the latest 64-bit ARM-powered devices.
+
<item><em/armel/: little-endian ARM machines.
<item><em/armhf/: an alternative to armel for ARMv7 machines with hard-float.
@@ -37,13 +39,11 @@
the Apple Macintosh PowerMac models, and the CHRP and PReP open architecture
machines.
-<item><em/s390/: IBM S/390 mainframe systems.
+<item><em/ppc64el/: 64-bit little-endian PowerPC port, supports several
+recent PowerPC/POWER processors.
-<item><em/s390x/: 64-bit port for IBM System z machines intended to replace s390.
+<item><em/s390x/: 64-bit port for IBM System z machines, replaced s390.
-<item><em/sparc/: this covers Sun's SPARC and most UltraSPARC systems, and
-some of their successors in the sun4 architectures.
-
</list>
<p>The development of binary distributions of Debian for
Index: customizing.sgml
===================================================================
--- customizing.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ customizing.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -17,8 +17,8 @@
without compromising security?
<p>Many device files in the <tt>/dev</tt> directory belong to some
-predefined groups. For example, <tt>/dev/fd0</tt> belongs to the
-<tt>floppy</tt> group, and <tt>/dev/dsp</tt> belongs to the
+predefined groups. For example, <tt>/dev/sr0</tt> belongs to the
+<tt>cdrom</tt> group, and <tt>/dev/dsp</tt> belongs to the
<tt>audio</tt> group.
<p>If you want a certain user to have access to one of these devices, just
Index: ftparchives.sgml
===================================================================
--- ftparchives.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ ftparchives.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -426,4 +426,6 @@
Instructions on how to do this are given in the (obsolete) <url name="Debian Repository
HOWTO"
id="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/repository-howto/repository-howto";>.
+# Should this link to outdated docu be removed? Or is it better, to keep it,
+# since outdated docu is still better than nothing?
Index: getting.sgml
===================================================================
--- getting.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ getting.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
the <url name="Debian Security Manual"
id="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/";>.
-<sect id="boot-floppies">Where/how can I get the Debian installation disks?
+<sect id="boot-disks">Where/how can I get the Debian installation disks?
<p>You can get the installation disks by downloading the appropriate files
from one of the
@@ -106,15 +106,11 @@
install the basic system from it and the rest over the network. For more
information please see <url id="http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/";>.
-<p>You can also download even smaller floppy disk image files, create
-bootable diskettes from them, start the installation procedure and get the
-rest of Debian over the network.
-
<sect id="alternativebootinstaller">Are there any alternative strategies for booting
the system installer?
<p>Yes. Apart from CD or DVD, you can install Debian GNU/Linux by booting from
-floppy disks, USB memory stick, directly from hard disk, or using TFTP net
+USB memory stick, directly from hard disk, or using TFTP net
booting. For installing on multiple computers it's possible to do fully
automatic installations. NB: not all methods are supported by all computer
architectures. Once the installer has booted, the rest of the system can be
Index: kernel.sgml
===================================================================
--- kernel.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ kernel.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -39,24 +39,11 @@
<p>Detailed instructions for using the <package/kernel-package/ package
are given in the file <file>/usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README.gz</file>.
-<sect id="custombootdisk">How can I make a custom boot floppy?
-
-<p>This task is greatly aided by the Debian package <package/boot-floppies/,
-normally found in the <tt>admin</tt> section of the Debian FTP archive.
-Shell scripts in this package produce boot floppies in the <tt>SYSLINUX</tt>
-format. These are <tt>MS-DOS</tt> formatted floppies whose master boot
-records have been altered so that they boot Linux directly (or whatever
-other operating system has been defined in the <file>syslinux.cfg</file> file on the
-floppy). Other scripts in this package produce emergency root disks and
-can even reproduce the base disks.
-
-<p>You will find more information about this in the
-<file>/usr/share/doc/boot-floppies/README</file> file after installing the
-<package/boot-floppies/ package.
-
<sect id="modules">What special provisions does Debian provide to deal with
modules?
-
+### There is no package "modconf" in stable anymore.
+### Is there still such mechanism in Debian, or is it no longer needed?
+
<p>Debian's <package/modconf/ package provides a shell script
(<file>/usr/sbin/modconf</file>) which can be used to customize the
configuration of modules. This script presents a menu-based interface,
Index: pkg_basics.sgml
===================================================================
--- pkg_basics.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ pkg_basics.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -151,7 +151,7 @@
at the Debian FTP sites.
<p>The Priority indicates how important is this package for installation, so
-that semi-intelligent software like dselect or aptitude can sort the
+that semi-intelligent software like apt or aptitude can sort the
package into a category of e.g. packages optionally installed. See
<ref id="priority">.
@@ -360,8 +360,7 @@
<em/purge/ and <em/hold/ in the package status?
<p>These "want" flags tell what the user wanted to do with a package (as
-indicated either by the user's actions in the "Select" section of
-<tt>dselect</tt>, or by the user's direct invocations of <tt>dpkg</tt>).
+indicated by the user's direct invocations of <tt>dpkg</tt>).
<p>Their meanings are:
<list>
@@ -377,8 +376,7 @@
<sect id="puttingonhold">How do I put a package on hold?
-<p>There are three ways of holding back packages, with dpkg, aptitude
-or with dselect.
+<p>There are two ways of holding back packages, with dpkg or aptitude.
<p>With dpkg, you have to export the list of package selections, with:
<example>dpkg --get-selections \* > selections.txt</example>
@@ -395,11 +393,6 @@
and remove the hold with
<example>aptitude unhold package_name</example>
-<p>With dselect, you have to enter the [S]elect screen, find the
-package you wish to hold in its present state, and press the `=' key (or
-`H'). The changes will go live immediately after you exit the [S]elect
-screen.
-
<sect id="sourcepkgs">How do I install a source package?
<p>Debian source packages can't actually be "installed", they are just
Index: pkgtools.sgml
===================================================================
--- pkgtools.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ pkgtools.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
level.
<p>It is important to understand that the higher level package
-management tools such as <prgn/aptitude/ or <prgn/dselect/ rely on
+management tools such as <prgn/aptitude/ or <prgn/synaptic/ rely on
<prgn/apt/ which, itself, relies on <prgn/dpkg/ to manage the packages
in the system.
@@ -66,6 +66,9 @@
<p>APT is the <em>Advanced Package Tool</em>, an advanced interface to the
Debian packaging system which provides the <prgn/apt-get/ program.
+It provides commandline tools for searching and managing as well
+as querying information about packages as a low-level access to all features
+of the libapt-pkg library.
It features complete installation ordering, multiple source capability and
several other unique features, see the User's Guide in
<tt>/usr/share/doc/apt-doc/guide.html/index.html</tt> (you will have to install
@@ -164,9 +167,8 @@
perform package management tasks such as installing, upgrading, and removing
packages.
-<p><prgn/aptitude/ provides the functionality of <prgn/dselect/ and
-<prgn/apt-get/, as well as many additional features not found in
-either program:
+<p><prgn/aptitude/ provides the functionality of
+<prgn/apt-get/, as well as many additional features:
<list>
<item><prgn/aptitude/ offers easy access to all versions of a package.
@@ -239,143 +241,6 @@
<sect1 id="dpkg-extra">Other package management tools
-<sect2 id="dselect">dselect
-
-<p>This program is a menu-driven interface to the Debian package management
-system. For woody and earlier releases, this was the main package management interface for
-for first-time installations, but currently users are encouraged to use
-<prgn/aptitude/ instead. Some users might feel more comfortable using
-<prgn/aptitude/ and it is also recommended over <prgn/dselect/ for large-scale
-upgrades. For more information on <prgn/aptitude/ please see <ref
-id="aptitude">.
-
-<p><prgn/dselect/ can:
-<list>
- <item>guide the user as he/she chooses among packages to install or remove,
- ensuring that no packages are installed that conflict with one another,
- and that all packages required to make each package work properly are
- installed;
- <item>warn the user about inconsistencies or incompatibilities in their
- selections;
- <item>determine the order in which the packages must be installed;
- <item>automatically perform the installation or removal; and
- <item>guide the user through whatever configuration process are required
- for each package.
-</list>
-
-<p><prgn/dselect/ begins by presenting the user with a menu of 7 items,
-each of which is a specific action. The user can select one of the actions
-by using the arrow keys to move the highlighter bar, then pressing the
-<em><enter></em> key to select the highlighted action.
-
-<p>What the user sees next depends on the action he selected. If he selects
-any option but <tt>Access</tt> or <tt>Select</tt>, then <prgn/dselect/
-will simply proceed to execute the specified action: e.g., if the user
-selected the action <tt>Remove</tt>, then dselect would proceed to remove
-all of the files selected for removal when the user last chose the
-<tt>Select</tt> action.
-
-<p>Both the <tt>Access</tt> menu item and the <tt>Select</tt> menu item
-lead to additional menus. In both cases, the menus are presented as
-split screens; the top screen gives a scrollable list of choices, while
-the bottom screen gives a brief explanation ("info") for each choice.
-
-<p>Extensive on-line help is available, use the '?' key to get to a help
-screen at any time.
-
-<p>The order in which the actions are presented in the first <prgn/dselect/
-menu represents the order in which a user would normally choose
-<prgn/dselect/ to install packages. However, a user can pick any of the
-main menu choices as often as needed (including not at all, depending on
-what one wants to do).
-
-<list>
- <item>Begin by choosing an <strong/Access Method/. This is the
- method by which the user plans on accessing Debian packages; e.g., some
- users have Debian packages available on CD-ROM, while others plan to
- fetch them using anonymous FTP. The selected "Access Method" is stored
- after <prgn/dselect/ exits, so if it does not change, then this option
- need not be invoked again.
-
- <item>Then <strong/Update/ the list of available packages. To do this,
- <prgn/dselect/ reads the file "Packages.gz" which should be included
- in the top level of the directory where the Debian packages to be
- installed are stored. (But if it is not there, <prgn/dselect/ will
- offer to make it for you.)
-
- <item><strong/Select/ specific packages for installation on his system.
- After choosing this menu item, the user is first presented with a full
- screen of help (unless the `--expert' command line option was used).
- Once the user exits the Help screen, he sees the split-screen menu for
- choosing packages to install (or remove).
-
- <p>The top part of the screen is a relatively narrow window into the
- list of Debian's &all-pkgs; packages; the bottom part of the screen
- contains description of the package or group of packages which are
- highlighted above.
-
- <p>One can specify which packages should be operated on by highlighting
- a package name or the label for a group of packages. After that, you
- can select packages:
- <taglist>
- <tag>to be installed:
- <item>This is accomplished by pressing the `+' key.
- <tag>to be deleted:
- <item>Packages can be deleted two ways:
- <list>
- <item>removed: this removes most of the files associated with the
- package, but preserves the files listed as configuration files
- (see <ref id="conffile">) and package configuration
- information. This is done by pressing the `-' key.
- <item>purged: this removes <em/every/ file that is part of the
- package. This is done by pressing the `_' key.
- </list>
- Note that it's not possible to remove "All Packages". If you try
- that, your system will instead be reduced to the initial installed
- base packages.
- <tag>to be put "on hold"
- <item>This is done by pressing `=', and it effectively tells
- <prgn/dselect/ not to upgrade a package even if the version
- currently installed on your system is not as recent as the version
- that is available in the Debian repository you are using (this was
- specified when you set the <strong/Access Method/, and acquired when
- you used <strong/Update/).
- <p>Just like you can put a package on hold, you can reverse such
- setting by pressing `:'. That tells <prgn/dselect/ that the
- package(s) may be upgraded if a newer version is available. This is
- the default setting.
- </taglist>
-
- <p>You can select a different order in which the packages are presented,
- by using the `o' key to cycle between various options for sorting the
- packages. The default order is to present packages by Priority; within
- each priority, packages are presented in order of the directory (a.k.a.
- section) of the archive in which they are stored. Given this sort order,
- some packages in section A (say) may be presented first, followed by
- some packages in section B, followed by more packages (of lower
- priority) in section A.
-
- <p>You can also expand meanings of the labels at the top of the screen,
- by using the `v' (verbose) key. This action pushes much of the text that
- formerly fit onto the display off to the right. To see it, press the
- right arrow; to scroll back to the left, press the left arrow.
-
- <p>If you select a package for installation or removal, e.g.,
- <package/foo.deb/, and that package depends on (or recommends) another
- package, e.g., <package/blurf.deb/, then <prgn/dselect/ will place the
- you in a sub-screen of the main selection screen. There you can choose
- among the related packages, accepting the suggested actions (to install
- or not), or rejecting them. To do the latter, press Shift-D; to return
- to the former, press Shift-U. In any case, you can save your selections
- and return to the main selection screen by pressing Shift-Q.
-
- <item>Users returning to the main menu can then select the "Install"
- menu item to unpack and configure the selected packages.
- Alternatively, users wishing to remove files can choose the "Remove"
- menu item. At any point, users can choose "Quit" to exit dselect;
- users' selections are preserved by <prgn/dselect/.
-</list>
-
<sect2 id="dpkg-deb">dpkg-deb
<p>This program manipulates Debian archive(<tt>.deb</tt>) files.
@@ -403,8 +268,8 @@
<sect2 id="dpkg-split">dpkg-split
-<p>This program splits large package into smaller files (e.g., for writing
-onto a set of floppy disks), and can also be used to merge a set of split
+<p>This program splits large package into smaller files,
+and can also be used to merge a set of split
files back into a single file. It can only be used on a Debian system (i.e.
a system containing the <package/dpkg/ package), since it calls the program
<tt>dpkg-deb</tt> to parse the debian package file into its component records.
@@ -415,8 +280,8 @@
<item>Execute the command <tt>dpkg-split --split foo.deb</tt>.
This will produce N files each with a file size of approximately 460 KBytes
in the current directory.
- <item>Copy those N files to floppy disks.
- <item>Copy the contents of the floppy disks onto the hard disk of your
+ <item>Copy those N files to some storage mediums.
+ <item>Copy the contents of the mediums onto the hard disk of your
choice on the other machine.
<item>Join those part-files together using <tt>dpkg-split --join "foo*"</tt>.
</list>
Index: software.sgml
===================================================================
--- software.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ software.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -167,10 +167,9 @@
keyboards, and with utilities (in the <tt>kbd</tt> package) to install,
view, and modify the tables.
<p>The installation prompts the user to specify the keyboard he will use.
- <item>Vast majority of the software we packaged supports entering
- non-US-ASCII characters used in other Latin languages (e.g. ISO-8859-1
- or ISO-8859-2), and a number of programs support multi-byte languages
- such as Japanese or Chinese.
+ <item>Nearly all of the software in Debian supports UTF-8 as
+ character set. Legacy character sets as ISO-8859-1
+ or ISO-8859-2 should be considered obsolete.
<item>Currently, support for German-, Spanish-, Finnish-, French-,
Hungarian-, Italian-, Japanese-, Korean-, Dutch-, Polish-,
Portuguese-, Russian-, Turkish-, and Chinese-language
Index: uptodate.sgml
===================================================================
--- uptodate.sgml (Revision 11091)
+++ uptodate.sgml (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -68,13 +68,13 @@
<p>For details, see the manual page <manref name="aptitude" section="8">,
and the file <file>/usr/share/aptitude/README</file>.
-<sect1 id="apt">apt-get, dselect and apt-cdrom
+<sect1 id="apt">apt-get and apt-cdrom
<p>An alternative to <prgn/aptitude/ is <prgn/apt-get/ which is
APT-based command-line tool (described previously in <ref id="apt-get">).
-<p>Both <prgn/apt-get/, the APT-based command-line tool for handling packages, and
-<prgn/dselect/, provide a simple, safe way to install and upgrade packages.
+<p><prgn/apt-get/, the APT-based command-line tool for handling packages,
+provides a simple, safe way to install and upgrade packages.
<p>To use <prgn/apt-get/, edit the
<tt>/etc/apt/sources.list</tt> file to set it up, just as for <ref
@@ -88,11 +88,6 @@
See also the <manref name="apt-get" section="8"> manual page, as well
as <ref id="apt-get">.
-<p>To use APT with <prgn/dselect/, choose the APT access method in dselect's
-method selection screen (option 0) and then specify the sources that should
-be used. The configuration file is <file>/etc/apt/sources.list</file>.
-See also <ref id="dselect">.
-
<p>If you want to use CDs/DVDs/BDs to install packages, you can use <prgn/apt-cdrom/.
For details, please see the Release Notes, section "Adding APT sources from
optical media".
@@ -126,19 +121,6 @@
<!-- Should we recommend GNU wget here, too? -->
-<sect1 id="dpkg-mountable">dpkg-mountable
-
-<p>dpkg-mountable adds an access method called `mountable' to dselect's
-list, which allows you to install from any file system specified in /etc/fstab.
-For example, the archive could be a normal hard disk partition or an NFS
-server, which it will automatically mount and umount for you if necessary.
-
-<p>It also has some extra features not found in the standard dselect
-methods, such as provision for a local file tree (either parallel to the
-main distribution or totally separate), and only getting packages which are
-required, rather than the time-consuming recursive directory scan, as well
-as logging of all dpkg actions in the install method.
-
<sect id="upgradesingle">Must I go into single user mode in order to
upgrade a package?
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