Keeping my distribution current

["Marc Mongeon" <Mongeon@bankoe.com>]

I recently installed Debian Linux 2.1 (slink?) and would like to automate
the task of monitoring changes to installed packages.  My plan was to
set up a weekly cron job that runs something like:

apt-get update
apt-get --download-only dist-upgrade

I figured I'd get an e-mail every week describing what packages had
changed, then I could manually install the ones I chose to.  I figured
"apt-get --simulate dist-upgrade" would also work, but with the download
flag, I would have local copies of the files and the manual installation
would go more quickly if/when I decided to do it.

Here is my sources.list file:
----- begin sources.list -----
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US
----- end sources.list -----

Here are my questions:

1.  Given the structure of the http.us.debian.org website
(http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/[contrib|main|non-free]/),
does that sources.list file look right?  The contents are unchanged
from the original install of apt.  "apt-get update" appears to work
correctly, but I'm a little suspicious because the Packages down-
loads are awfully fast (>2M in <5s, usually).

2.  Note that I am monitoring only the stable release.  I am assuming
that "stable" <> "static", i.e., that the stable release is updated as bug
fixes are implemented.  Should I be monitoring an unstable or proposed-
updates area instead?

3.  Has anybody implemented a similar update scheme that works well
for them?  Should I just subscribe to debian-changes and do manual
updates when appropriate?

I apologize for my verbose posting (brevity is not one of my strong
points :).  Thank you for any help you can provide.

Marc Mongeon