On Du, 10 aug 14, 10:46:56, Richard Owlett wrote:
My goal: understand Debian from a fairly low level on up
Environment: a laptop dedicated exclusively as a learning environment
Resources: complete DVD sets for Squeeze and Wheezy (totally isolated from
internet ;)
...
What should I be reading to understand:
1. what would be minimal set of programs to install?
Given your stated goal I would suggest you start from the lowest level
"possible"[1] in Debian. That would be packages marked 'Essential:yes'.
If you have a stable install handy try this:
aptitude search ?essential
These are packages that dpkg/apt/aptitude will not remove from your
system without *serious* "convincing". If you want to start with such a
system you should probably use 'debootstrap' with '--variant=minbase'
which according to the manual installs only Essential:yes packages and
apt[2].
Such a system + a kernel and a bootloader[3] should be able to boot, but
won't be much use.
From here you could try building up your system by working your way "up"
by package priorities (required, important, standard, etc.), but you
could also just start installing the applications you really need and
let dependencies take care of the rest. E.g. you could just try to
install openbox and see what happens ;)
At this point you will also need to decide about your strategy regarding
recommended packages. Here are a few options:
1. disable in apt/aptitude
This will keep you installation smaller, but if a program seems to be
missing functionality or behaves strangely you should start by
investigating Recommends: (and Suggests:) and install them by hand.
2. leave enabled, but carefully inspect the installed Recommends at each
package install.
3. disable in apt/aptitude, but carefully inspect the list of
Recommended packages and install as needed
4. leave enabled and just let the package maintainer decide for you
Both 2. and 3. are very easy to do with aptitude in interactive mode,
especially since you can enable/disable package installation as you wich
before proceeding.
Personally I do 3. for very small installations (e.g. Raspbeery Pi with
2 GB SD card), 2. on my own workstation and 4. for systems I install for
other people.
2. what scripts get run after a cold or warm boot?
(I've discovered I know less about that than I thought I did.)
[1] possible without rebuilding packages or replacing dependencies with
fake packages
[2] this is probably a leftover from times when apt was not Essential:
yes
[3] both are optional, even if only to allow for chroots
Kind regards,
Andrei