Re: next debian stable ?
On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 08:57:59PM -0500, David Krider wrote:
> Now expand the example to the general case. BTW, I just love how so
> many people on Linux forums assume that if you question *their*
> methodology, you must not know much about Linux. FYI, I've been a
> full-time systems admin on various Sun (E10K & EMC Symmetrix), IBM,
> HP, SGI, and x86 boxes for going on 7 years now. It's not like I don't
> know what I'm doing with open systems. ANYWAY, now I start imagining
> what it would be like to setup systems based on Debian at my company,
> my contracting job, and my charity job. Off the top of my head, I need
> to install FrontPage extensions at at least two of these 3 types of
> locations. If you know anything about this miserable product, you know
> how difficult it is to install in Apache 1.3 servers. So I want to try
> Apache 2. I hear it's much easier there. People keep blithely saying,
> "Hey, just apt-get install it from unstable." I haven't been through
> this exercise specifically, but I'm willing to bet there are a lot of
> dependencies there. Where do I learn how to do this? Why, by living in
> such a mess on the desktop, of course. Trying to pull in just, say, a
> better kernel, is a perfect example of how this process is supposed to
> go in the general sense. That's what I mean about "mastering." The
> process isn't nearly as clean as fans of apt would like to make
> everyone else think it is.
Actually, it is. For starters, read up on apt "pinning". If you want
to use "testing" as your default release, create a file (we'll call it
10default) in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ containing the following:
APT::Default-Release "testing";
Now, update your sources.list file to contain both "testing" and
"unstable" entries. In most cases this can be done by simply copying
your testing entries and changing "testing" to "unstable".
Now, update your list of packages:
apt-get update
Now install your desired package from "unstable". This can be done two
ways:
apt-get install <package-name>/unstable
or
apt-get install -t unstable <package-name>
The difference is that the first method will try to pull only
<package-name> from the unstable branch. If there are dependancies for
said package that can not be met by the packages installed on your
system or in the preferred release (in this case testing) then it will
error and indicate which packages have a problem. The second option
will temporary change your preferred release to "unstable" and pull in
the requested package and all dependancies. As with any apt-get, if it
needs to pull in extra packages, it will inform you of this and ask if
you'd like to continue.
Now, if you'd like to see where packages would be pulled from, simply
add a "-s" (for simulate) onto either of the commands.
> 1) How many times have you "seamlessly upgraded" your Debian boxes to
> a new version?
All of my boxes have been running happily since installation. Hardware
failure is the only critical problem I've encountered on any of them.
> 2) See my points above on Apache 2. I suspect I'm not alone...
I installed Apache2 (using the above method) on my Subversion server
with no problems.
> 3) Maybe rpm-based systems don't respect admin changes _as well as_
> apt, but before major changes, you should have a backup of your config
> anyway. My personal taste is to let it overwrite my changes with a
> fresh file, then merge my changes back in. I've been doing that for
> quite some time, and I was doing it on Debian too.
A package upgrade (regardless of version magnitude) should never
overwrite an admin's changes.
> >I have a bias towards the server side of the equation as I believe
> >that's where debian has, and will continue to make inroads in
> >corporate-ville.
>
> You're joking, aren't you?
No he's not. The company I work for certianly isn't a "large
corporation", but we use Debian on several systems, including systems
for clients. There's no way I'd let them put RH or another RPM based
distribution on these boxes. They start with RH and supporting it was a
nightmare.
--
Jamin W. Collins
Remember, root always has a loaded gun. Don't run around with it unless
you absolutely need it. -- Vineet Kumar
Reply to: