Hi people. I've just leased a Debian server from Server Beach. I've managed to upgrade it from 3.0 to 3.1 and install a few apps I want to play with. However I'm a recovering RedHat user and therefore very green when it comes to Debian. ;) I would appreciate any sage advice/tips to help me transition from people (Daniel?, Perry?) who've made the switch before. Thanks. -- Oliver Jones > Roving Code Warrior > www.deeperdesign.com
I've just leased a Debian server from Server Beach. I've managed to upgrade it from 3.0 to 3.1 and install a few apps I want to play with.
However I'm a recovering RedHat user and therefore very green when it comes to Debian. ;) I would appreciate any sage advice/tips to help me transition from people (Daniel?, Perry?) who've made the switch before.
I think there are some tips around on the wiki in various places, and there are websites around that provide useful help, although I can't for the life of me remember them. The fundamental differences lie in: * package management, which probably isn't so different from FC now anyway * Use aptitude now, not apt-get * aptitude dist-uprade does different things to aptitude upgrade. I always use dist-upgrade and have no problems, I've had packages kept back when just using upgrade. Other people suggest other things. * packaging itself. .deb files are fairly different to .rpm, in the ways you can manipulate them. EG, I've yet to find a way to do an MD5 sum verification on all files in a .deb - something I found incredibly useful when trying to diagnose a compromised machine * Use dpkg -L <packagename> to get a list of the files in a package * Use dpkg -l <packagespec> to get a list of installed packages matching packagespec. dpkg -l on it's own lists all packages installed * configuration in /etc is different. No more /etc/sysconfig, etc. This will always take a while to come to grips with. Use dpkg -L <package> | grep /etc to list the files in /etc * Building packages from source is slightly more complicated than a .spec file, but you get used to it.
* Building packages from source is slightly more complicated than a .spec file, but you get used to it.
Building from a Debian source is "dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -rfakeroot" (you can get away with just dpkg-buildpackage in some circumstances; -uc -us means "don't sign" and -rfakeroot means "use the fakeroot program", so you can run it as a normal user). Hopefully Debian's huge package repository will mean you don't often find you need to package something yourself, but if you do, the Debian New Maintainers Guide at http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/index.en.html is the best place to start. Craig
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 09:56:53AM +1200, Daniel Lawson wrote:
* packaging itself. .deb files are fairly different to .rpm, in the ways you can manipulate them. EG, I've yet to find a way to do an MD5 sum verification on all files in a .deb - something I found incredibly useful when trying to diagnose a compromised machine
dpkg puts a file containing the md5 sums of each of the packages files into /var/lib/dpkg/info/$package.md5sums. install the "debsums" package and you can run 'debsums' to see which of the files on your system don't match the md5sum provided by the package. The main reasons I've found for checksums not matching is config files and prelinking. John
* aptitude dist-uprade does different things to aptitude upgrade. I always use dist-upgrade and have no problems, I've had packages kept back when just using upgrade. Other people suggest other things.
Right. I might read the man on that.
* Use dpkg -l <packagespec> to get a list of installed packages matching packagespec. dpkg -l on it's own lists all packages installed
I think I've managed to get my head around some of the dpkg/aptitude related stuff. More to learn but I have the basics.
* configuration in /etc is different. No more /etc/sysconfig, etc. This will always take a while to come to grips with. Use dpkg -L <package> | grep /etc to list the files in /etc
Right. I've already played with some of those differences. The apache config is quite nice. Though apache2ctl seems not to do anything (except configtest). Is there anything like Redhat's "service" script or do I have to just use /etc/init.d/<service> <command>? I've started a RedHatToDebianNotes wiki node. Regards -- Oliver Jones > Roving Code Warrior > www.deeperdesign.com
Oliver Jones wrote:
* aptitude dist-uprade does different things to aptitude upgrade. I always use dist-upgrade and have no problems, I've had packages kept back when just using upgrade. Other people suggest other things.
The golden rule to remember is that upgrade will not upgrade a package that would install another package, where dist-upgrade will. For example, between two distributions, you might have a change in dependencies: woody: php4-foo depends libfoo-1 sarge: php4-foo depends libfoo-2, libbar-1 If you just performed an 'upgrade', php4-foo would be held back. (Contrived example). In saying that, I have only ever used aptitude to upgrade woody to sarge and don't think you need to use it day to day after an upgrade (the version of apt-get in woody doesn't handle some of the stuff aptitude does, but I think the version of apt-get in Sarge is fine).
Right. I've already played with some of those differences. The apache config is quite nice. Though apache2ctl seems not to do anything (except configtest). Is there anything like Redhat's "service" script or do I have to just use /etc/init.d/<service> <command>?
http://www.wlug.org.nz/invoke-rc.d(8) But everyone just uses /e<tab>/i<tab>/ ;) Craig
participants (4)
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Craig Box -
Daniel Lawson -
John R. McPherson -
Oliver Jones