Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 06:29:01PM -0500, w trillich wrote: apropos? okay, i'll try that... man -k is easier to type. :P CONCLUSION: there are #NO# pointers from a standard cd-install of slink, Of course not. Correct me if I'm wrong but apt didn't really come into its own as the standard package tool until potato. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Previously Joey Hess wrote: http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-dpkg-0004/msg2.html Okay, but that issue assumes that a package leaves a bomb in its prerm. There is no way to protect yourself from such trojan packages anyway, wether you use rpm or dpkg. Wichert. -- _ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D | pgp2wGo5enket.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Joey Hess wrote: http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-dpkg-0004/msg2.html Okay, but that issue assumes that a package leaves a bomb in its prerm. There is no way to protect yourself from such trojan packages anyway, wether you use rpm or dpkg. The idea is it need not be a trojan, but something unintentinally stupid like rm -rf $foo/, where $foo ends up being ''. -- see shy jo
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 07:46:47PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote: i think dlocate really takes care of the problem nicely, for things like status and file lists dlocate is quite fast. its unfortunate that it was removed from potato for a *ONE LINE BUG* with a fix in the bts... why oh why could there not have been an NMU?? i wasn't even aware that it was removed from potato until i tried to install dlocate on a potato system with apt-get a week or so ago. this is the second of my packages that have been removed for trivial reasons. i gave up on potato after the first one...at the time, i offered to upload a version which fixed a minor packaging error (i forgot to specify frozen as well as unstable) but i didn't get a reply until after the deadline and the answer was basically haha! too late! - this does not exactly inspire enthusiasm in me. for that reason (amongst others, like the fact that potato is already obsolete and will be even more obsolete by the time it gets released), i do not give a damn about potato. the bug isn't, IMO, even in dlocate. it is in the slocate package. slocate should NOT replace GNU locate if it is not 100% compatible with it. but, as i said, i don't care. i don't have the time or the energy to argue with a release manager whose goal seems to be to find excuses to remove packages from the distribution. IMO, the stable should be treated as a fork, anyway. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Thus spake w trillich on Sun, May 21, 2000 at 01:49:35PM CDT which is why it should not surprise any gurus on this list that newbies upgrading from slink know nothing about APT or its magic. they don't rtfm because they don't know about it. NEWBIES: check out 'apt-get'! it's better than dpkg, which is better than redhat's rpm 'system'... Even some of us old-timers don't know a lot about it. I've been using Debian since Buzz and Hamm, and didn't know much about it. My only contact with it before this year was when one of the less clueful sysadmins for the Linux box belonging to a local users group did an 'apt-get upgrade' to update the system shotgun style and seriously hozed a bunch of stuff we'd spent a lot of time configuring! I've started using it as my access method under dselect and it's cool. Comments on this forum have encouraged me to revisit the apt command line utilities as well. -- Lindsay Haisley | Everything works| PGP public key FMP Computer Services | if you let it | available at [EMAIL PROTECTED]|(The Roadie) | http://www.fmp.com/pubkeys http://www.fmp.com| |
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Previously Joey Hess wrote: When we were talking about this at the office, we did come up with one situaton where the rpm ordering actually let you correct problems in a previous package in a way dpkg's ordering did not. However, I figured out a workaround we could use if we ever ran into that (very unlikely) case. Can you tell me which problem that was? The only one I know of is a broken prerm in an installed package and no fixed version in the new version when upgrading, or trying to remove that package. Wichert. -- _ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D | pgpdtwtryAQaZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Cleaning up the dpkg status file? [Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.]
Ethan Benson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:07:00PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: That is a result of the fact that rpm uses a binary database for its data, while dpkg uses a large number of text-files instead. The advantage of that is that it is robust (if a single file gets corrupted it's not much of a problem), and that it is possible to fix or modify things by hand using a normal text editor if needed. this is a tremendous advantage of dpkg, it should never be changed to use a binary database. the human readable/editable dpkg database has saved me from having to reinstall a system from scratch when the /var partition was destroyed and had to be restored with a slightly out of date backup. dpkg was broken due to the inconsistent databases but it only took a little bit of editing to fix it. Concerning this databases, a remark and a question: after a long time of updating and upgrading, installing and purging, I've got the impression that it takes longer and longer time for dpkg to read the database before taking an action. When looking at the `status' file, I can see numerous packages which I installed and tested and then purged out again, many of them don't even exist any more in the Debian packaging system. Would it help to start up dpkg a little bit quicker if I clean up the database from all this stuff (and if yes, is there a automatic way of doing this)? Greetings and thanks for your answers, joachim
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I never took the time to read all of this mail (had to do with the mail you send right afterwards to me only, I though it would go in the same direction), but I agree with the problem. I've already mailed the package maintainers of apt-get with a possible solution: point out to apt-get before dselect starts the first time at the end of the installation. Another thing that might be a good plan (I came to it because of your last remark about the manpage (which I think would be a good idea), another would be a symlink called 'upgrade' to 'apt-get', it would make it a lot easier to find! The tip things could be okay on one side, but might become irritating if there aren't enough different ones. Ron Rademaker On Sat, 20 May 2000, w trillich wrote: seems like an uphill battle, eh? Ron Rademaker wrote: Try: pt-get install pine It'll give youenough information to get a bit further Ron Rademaker PS. Damn when is someone going to read apt-ge's FM!!, perhaps we'll just have to put a few pages with apt-get info during install on the users screen, the amount of question that has to do with it are (mostly, exceptly for some) just TOO EASY!!! would you know to read the manpage for 'gribnif' because that was just the precise command you needed to clavis your frob into the frammistat? not unless something pointed you there! if you're looking for a way to mark up text and generate html from there, you'd start with your function: apropos markup and voila, you'd know to try man wml* to learn more. for apt, there's no way for a newbie TO KNOW TO LOOK FOR IT. here's the newbie perspective, if you've forgotten: hum de da dum... i'd like to upgrade my debian system to a more up-to-date version. i've learned about the man command, but i can't find the exact command to use for my task. apropos? okay, i'll try that... apropos upgrade pg_upgrade (1) - allows upgrade from a previous release without reloading data upgrade-windowmaker-defaults (8) - No manpage for this program, utility or function. wmu (1) - Website META Language Upgrade Utility wmu (1) - Website META Language Upgrade Utility hmm. that pg_upgrade seems like it's for some database only. try again. apropos debian | sort Debian::Debconf::Client::ConfModule (3pm) - client module for ConfModules DebianNet (3pm) - create, remove, enable or disable entry in /etc/inetd.conf DebianNet (3pm) - create, remove, enable or disable entry in /etc/inetd.conf confmodule (3) - communicate with Debian configuration system FrontEnd. deb (5) - Debian GNU/Linux binary package format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format deb-old (5) - old style Debian GNU/Linux binary package format dh_builddeb (1) - build debian packages dh_du (1)- generate DEBIAN/du file (deprecated) dh_installdeb (1)- install files into the DEBIAN directory dh_installmenu (1) - install debian menu files into package build directories dh_md5sums (1) - generate DEBIAN/md5sums file dh_movefiles (1) - move files out of debian/tmp into subpackages dh_testdir (1) - test directory before building debian package dang! how many manpages do i have to wade through to find if what i want is in here? okay, i'll be a good newbie and keep looking, but i can't spend my whole life looking at manpages for commands i don't want or understand... dhelp (1)- Debian online help dhelp_parse (8) - Debian online help parser diald-deb (7)- diald information for Debian/GNU Linux dpkg (8) - a medium-level package manager for Debian GNU/Linux dpkg-buildpackage (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-deb (1) - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool dpkg-distaddfile (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-genchanges (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-gencontrol (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-name (1)- rename Debian packages to full package names dpkg-parsechangelog (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-shlibdeps (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-source (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-split (8) - Debian package archive split/join tool dselect (8) - console Debian package handling frontend install-docs (8) - manage online Debian documentation isdnconfig (8) - configure the Debian isdnutils package menufile (5) - entry in the Debian menu system sambaconfig (8) - configure Samba for Debian systems update-menus (1) - generate Debian menu system package manager? i want to upgrade, but maybe what i'm upgrading is a package (if you think any average newbie
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Wichert Akkerman wrote: Can you tell me which problem that was? http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-dpkg-0004/msg2.html -- see shy jo
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:37:59PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote: Apt uses a mixed approach: it uses the same textfiles as dpkg but uses a binary cache to also get the advantages of a binary database. it does? where? See /var/cache/apt/*.bin files. An example why is that good is the speed of `apt-cache show foo' compared to non-speed of `dpkg -p foo'. (of course, there are faster things to browse the textual database, they just aren't in dpkg itself) -- Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
That's why I said to point to it during installation! Ron Rademaker On Sat, 20 May 2000, w trillich wrote: seems like an uphill battle, eh? Ron Rademaker wrote: Try: pt-get install pine It'll give youenough information to get a bit further Ron Rademaker PS. Damn when is someone going to read apt-ge's FM!!, perhaps we'll just have to put a few pages with apt-get info during install on the users screen, the amount of question that has to do with it are (mostly, exceptly for some) just TOO EASY!!! would you know to read the manpage for 'gribnif' because that was just the precise command you needed to clavis your frob into the frammistat? not unless something pointed you there! if you're looking for a way to mark up text and generate html from there, you'd start with your function: apropos markup and voila, you'd know to try man wml* to learn more. for apt, there's no way for a newbie TO KNOW TO LOOK FOR IT. here's the newbie perspective, if you've forgotten: hum de da dum... i'd like to upgrade my debian system to a more up-to-date version. i've learned about the man command, but i can't find the exact command to use for my task. apropos? okay, i'll try that... apropos upgrade pg_upgrade (1) - allows upgrade from a previous release without reloading data upgrade-windowmaker-defaults (8) - No manpage for this program, utility or function. wmu (1) - Website META Language Upgrade Utility wmu (1) - Website META Language Upgrade Utility hmm. that pg_upgrade seems like it's for some database only. try again. apropos debian | sort Debian::Debconf::Client::ConfModule (3pm) - client module for ConfModules DebianNet (3pm) - create, remove, enable or disable entry in /etc/inetd.conf DebianNet (3pm) - create, remove, enable or disable entry in /etc/inetd.conf confmodule (3) - communicate with Debian configuration system FrontEnd. deb (5) - Debian GNU/Linux binary package format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format deb-old (5) - old style Debian GNU/Linux binary package format dh_builddeb (1) - build debian packages dh_du (1)- generate DEBIAN/du file (deprecated) dh_installdeb (1)- install files into the DEBIAN directory dh_installmenu (1) - install debian menu files into package build directories dh_md5sums (1) - generate DEBIAN/md5sums file dh_movefiles (1) - move files out of debian/tmp into subpackages dh_testdir (1) - test directory before building debian package dang! how many manpages do i have to wade through to find if what i want is in here? okay, i'll be a good newbie and keep looking, but i can't spend my whole life looking at manpages for commands i don't want or understand... dhelp (1)- Debian online help dhelp_parse (8) - Debian online help parser diald-deb (7)- diald information for Debian/GNU Linux dpkg (8) - a medium-level package manager for Debian GNU/Linux dpkg-buildpackage (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-deb (1) - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool dpkg-distaddfile (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-genchanges (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-gencontrol (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-name (1)- rename Debian packages to full package names dpkg-parsechangelog (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-shlibdeps (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-source (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-split (8) - Debian package archive split/join tool dselect (8) - console Debian package handling frontend install-docs (8) - manage online Debian documentation isdnconfig (8) - configure the Debian isdnutils package menufile (5) - entry in the Debian menu system sambaconfig (8) - configure Samba for Debian systems update-menus (1) - generate Debian menu system package manager? i want to upgrade, but maybe what i'm upgrading is a package (if you think any average newbie will think like this, keep dreaming). aha (says the newbie) i use 'dpkg-*' to install and update things on debian... CONCLUSION: there are #NO# pointers from a standard cd-install of slink, from what i can tell, that would direct any newbie to try to use apt-* for anything. the only pointers a newbie will get is someone on this list saying 'use apt-get'! (when i first installed slink from cd, i selected the server/extended task, and went back to add a bunch of xwindows stuff later. there's no manpage for apt-anything.) RECOMMENDATION: add, to the mailing list dagline 'unsubscribe?' tag
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 06:29:01PM -0500, w trillich wrote: apropos? okay, i'll try that... man -k is easier to type. :P CONCLUSION: there are #NO# pointers from a standard cd-install of slink, Of course not. Correct me if I'm wrong but apt didn't really come into its own as the standard package tool until potato. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Steve Lamb wrote: On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 06:29:01PM -0500, w trillich wrote: there are #NO# pointers from a standard cd-install of slink, Of course not. Correct me if I'm wrong but apt didn't really come into its own as the standard package tool until potato. you're probably right. (and you probably know that. :) ) which is why it should not surprise any gurus on this list that newbies upgrading from slink know nothing about APT or its magic. they don't rtfm because they don't know about it. NEWBIES: check out 'apt-get'! it's better than dpkg, which is better than redhat's rpm 'system'...
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Wichert Akkerman wrote: I wouldn't call it nonsensical, but the way dpkg does it is definitely more robust. I need to take another close look at how rpm and dpkg differ in this respect anyway, so if people are interested in the little details I might be willing to write a little comparison about it.. I should probably add something about this to my rpm/deb comparison page. The amuising thing is I never even noticed how the order was reversed, in my prior experience with rpm, when reading all their docs, when I wrote that page, or working on alien (it is another reason though why running alien --scripts is unlikely to work..). When we were talking about this at the office, we did come up with one situaton where the rpm ordering actually let you correct problems in a previous package in a way dpkg's ordering did not. However, I figured out a workaround we could use if we ever ran into that (very unlikely) case. -- see shy jo
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:37:39PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote: On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:07:00PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Keith G. Murphy wrote: I must say, my subjective experience has been that rpm's are much faster to install something. Of course, it's also faster to throw my clothes on the floor, rather than put them in the hamper... That is a result of the fact that rpm uses a binary database for its data, while dpkg uses a large number of text-files instead. The advantage of that is that it is robust (if a single file gets corrupted it's not much of a problem), and that it is possible to fix or modify things by hand using a normal text editor if needed. this is a tremendous advantage of dpkg, it should never be changed to use a binary database. agreed, the plain text db is the right way to do it. OTOH, it would be nice if dpkg did what apt does and uses a binary db cache to speed up operations...updating both binary and text versions as changes are made. the text version would be considered authoritative (or source code) and the binary db would be the faster, compiled version. if the binary version ever got corrupted for any reason, it could be regenerated quickly from the text version. dpkg would also need to detect whether the text version was newer than the binary version and, if so, automatically rebuild the binary. nice idea, perhaps...but i don't know how practical it is or whether the time needed to maintain the binary db would more than offset the time saved. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 11:38:18AM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote: On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:37:59PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote: Apt uses a mixed approach: it uses the same textfiles as dpkg but uses a binary cache to also get the advantages of a binary database. it does? where? See /var/cache/apt/*.bin files. An example why is that good is the speed of `apt-cache show foo' compared to non-speed of `dpkg -p foo'. (of course, there are faster things to browse the textual database, they just aren't in dpkg itself) dlocate and grep-dctrl for example. interestingly, 'apt-cache show' is even faster than dlocate (which makes use of grep-dctrl to do the search). $ time apt-cache show dpkg /dev/null real0m0.235s user0m0.210s sys 0m0.030s $ time dlocate -s dpkg/dev/null real0m0.407s user0m0.380s sys 0m0.010s $ time dpkg -s dpkg/dev/null real0m1.517s user0m1.410s sys 0m0.100s craig -- craig sanders
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Mon, May 22, 2000 at 11:22:47AM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: agreed, the plain text db is the right way to do it. OTOH, it would be nice if dpkg did what apt does and uses a binary db cache to speed up operations...updating both binary and text versions as changes are made. the text version would be considered authoritative (or source code) and the binary db would be the faster, compiled version. if the binary version ever got corrupted for any reason, it could be regenerated quickly from the text version. dpkg would also need to detect whether the text version was newer than the binary version and, if so, automatically rebuild the binary. nice idea, perhaps...but i don't know how practical it is or whether the time needed to maintain the binary db would more than offset the time saved. i think dlocate really takes care of the problem nicely, for things like status and file lists dlocate is quite fast. its unfortunate that it was removed from potato for a *ONE LINE BUG* with a fix in the bts... why oh why could there not have been an NMU?? -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgpwvWD4I2iua.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Because Univ of Washington doesn't allow modified tarballs to be distributed, and you have to modify the tarball's paths to be Debian compliant. It's not too hard to find pine*.deb. Use Fast FTP Search. Pine _is_ semi-officially available as a (contrib/non-free) part of debian. The package contains pine in source-form (thus respecting the licence), but when installed it automatically compiles and moves stuff to the right directories. Or am I wrong? Arnout [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Previously Keith G. Murphy wrote: I must say, my subjective experience has been that rpm's are much faster to install something. Of course, it's also faster to throw my clothes on the floor, rather than put them in the hamper... That is a result of the fact that rpm uses a binary database for its data, while dpkg uses a large number of text-files instead. The advantage of that is that it is robust (if a single file gets corrupted it's not much of a problem), and that it is possible to fix or modify things by hand using a normal text editor if needed. Apt uses a mixed approach: it uses the same textfiles as dpkg but uses a binary cache to also get the advantages of a binary database. Wichert. -- _ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D | pgpSzSaPkpOLv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
seems like an uphill battle, eh? Ron Rademaker wrote: Try: pt-get install pine It'll give youenough information to get a bit further Ron Rademaker PS. Damn when is someone going to read apt-ge's FM!!, perhaps we'll just have to put a few pages with apt-get info during install on the users screen, the amount of question that has to do with it are (mostly, exceptly for some) just TOO EASY!!! would you know to read the manpage for 'gribnif' because that was just the precise command you needed to clavis your frob into the frammistat? not unless something pointed you there! if you're looking for a way to mark up text and generate html from there, you'd start with your function: apropos markup and voila, you'd know to try man wml* to learn more. for apt, there's no way for a newbie TO KNOW TO LOOK FOR IT. here's the newbie perspective, if you've forgotten: hum de da dum... i'd like to upgrade my debian system to a more up-to-date version. i've learned about the man command, but i can't find the exact command to use for my task. apropos? okay, i'll try that... apropos upgrade pg_upgrade (1) - allows upgrade from a previous release without reloading data upgrade-windowmaker-defaults (8) - No manpage for this program, utility or function. wmu (1) - Website META Language Upgrade Utility wmu (1) - Website META Language Upgrade Utility hmm. that pg_upgrade seems like it's for some database only. try again. apropos debian | sort Debian::Debconf::Client::ConfModule (3pm) - client module for ConfModules DebianNet (3pm) - create, remove, enable or disable entry in /etc/inetd.conf DebianNet (3pm) - create, remove, enable or disable entry in /etc/inetd.conf confmodule (3) - communicate with Debian configuration system FrontEnd. deb (5) - Debian GNU/Linux binary package format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format deb-old (5) - old style Debian GNU/Linux binary package format dh_builddeb (1) - build debian packages dh_du (1)- generate DEBIAN/du file (deprecated) dh_installdeb (1)- install files into the DEBIAN directory dh_installmenu (1) - install debian menu files into package build directories dh_md5sums (1) - generate DEBIAN/md5sums file dh_movefiles (1) - move files out of debian/tmp into subpackages dh_testdir (1) - test directory before building debian package dang! how many manpages do i have to wade through to find if what i want is in here? okay, i'll be a good newbie and keep looking, but i can't spend my whole life looking at manpages for commands i don't want or understand... dhelp (1)- Debian online help dhelp_parse (8) - Debian online help parser diald-deb (7)- diald information for Debian/GNU Linux dpkg (8) - a medium-level package manager for Debian GNU/Linux dpkg-buildpackage (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-deb (1) - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool dpkg-distaddfile (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-genchanges (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-gencontrol (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-name (1)- rename Debian packages to full package names dpkg-parsechangelog (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-shlibdeps (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-source (1) - Debian source package tools dpkg-split (8) - Debian package archive split/join tool dselect (8) - console Debian package handling frontend install-docs (8) - manage online Debian documentation isdnconfig (8) - configure the Debian isdnutils package menufile (5) - entry in the Debian menu system sambaconfig (8) - configure Samba for Debian systems update-menus (1) - generate Debian menu system package manager? i want to upgrade, but maybe what i'm upgrading is a package (if you think any average newbie will think like this, keep dreaming). aha (says the newbie) i use 'dpkg-*' to install and update things on debian... CONCLUSION: there are #NO# pointers from a standard cd-install of slink, from what i can tell, that would direct any newbie to try to use apt-* for anything. the only pointers a newbie will get is someone on this list saying 'use apt-get'! (when i first installed slink from cd, i selected the server/extended task, and went back to add a bunch of xwindows stuff later. there's no manpage for apt-anything.) RECOMMENDATION: add, to the mailing list dagline 'unsubscribe?' tag below, one itty-bitty line pointing to a debian newbie help page on the web. or rotate a newbie tip-of-the-day kind of thing, instead, at the end of the mailing
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:07:00PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Keith G. Murphy wrote: I must say, my subjective experience has been that rpm's are much faster to install something. Of course, it's also faster to throw my clothes on the floor, rather than put them in the hamper... That is a result of the fact that rpm uses a binary database for its data, while dpkg uses a large number of text-files instead. The advantage of that is that it is robust (if a single file gets corrupted it's not much of a problem), and that it is possible to fix or modify things by hand using a normal text editor if needed. this is a tremendous advantage of dpkg, it should never be changed to use a binary database. the human readable/editable dpkg database has saved me from having to reinstall a system from scratch when the /var partition was destroyed and had to be restored with a slightly out of date backup. dpkg was broken due to the inconsistent databases but it only took a little bit of editing to fix it. redhat dists on the other hand are said to be un-upgradable because the binary databases become corrupted so easy. (see archives of the linux-config mailing list for this) Apt uses a mixed approach: it uses the same textfiles as dpkg but uses a binary cache to also get the advantages of a binary database. it does? where? -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgpRherElqXhw.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I went through this with Terry Gray (Pine Development Team) and Santiago Vila (Debian maintainer of the Pine source) about the time Pine 4.20 was coming out... On Thu, 18 May 2000, Will Lowe wrote: Can I ask why debian doesn't include pine? Just curious. I know Debian The license for pine doesn't allow you to redistribute modified binaries (e.g., fix a bug in the source, compile it, and redistribute the executable you get from this). Therefore, it can't be included as part of Debian -- it doesn't meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines at http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines. Besides which, we have to make patches to pine to get it to put its files in the right place, etc. on a Debian system, and once we make those patches, we're not allowed to redistribute the compiled program anyway! ...well, not without getting permission first, which was given (or will be if requested, depending on how formal you want to be). Other distros that include Pine must obviously therefore compile without making patches, or have arranged other (special) redistribution terms with the University of Washington, or are simply violating the copyright. They probably just asked permission. The sticking point with Debian is that permission to distribute a modified binary does not apply to the end user, `everyone does not have the same permission'. The debian-user archive will have the results of that discussion; sorry, I don't have my email archive handy and can't narrow the date down for you. So, it is not so much that Debian doesn't have permission to distribute a modified binary package, it is that doing so would open up a whole can'o'worms w.r.t. redistribution... so why go there and possibly cause problems for Debian's distributors, eh. later, Bruce
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
So, it is not so much that Debian doesn't have permission to distribute a modified binary package, it is that doing so would open up a whole can'o'worms w.r.t. redistribution... so why go there and possibly cause problems for Debian's distributors, eh. That's exactly why it doesn't pass the DFSG test. It's really an almost-moot point, really, since apt-get has come along and can auto-build the package for you --it'd be tempting to have a fake pine package, which would simply apt-get -b source the source and then install the .deb files. I think similar schemes have actually been discussed several times, always with the end result being that everyone thought that while doing so would probably be legal, it'd violat the _spirit_ of the thing. This is definitely a FAQ, though. Will -- | [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/ | |PGP Public Key: http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/index.html#pgpkey| --
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Fri, May 19, 2000 at 02:52:16AM -0400, Will Lowe wrote: So, it is not so much that Debian doesn't have permission to distribute a modified binary package, it is that doing so would open up a whole can'o'worms w.r.t. redistribution... so why go there and possibly cause problems for Debian's distributors, eh. That's exactly why it doesn't pass the DFSG test. It's really an almost-moot point, really, since apt-get has come along and can auto-build the package for you --it'd be tempting to have a fake pine package, which would simply apt-get -b source the source and then install the .deb files. I think similar schemes have actually been discussed several times, always with the end result being that everyone thought that while doing so would probably be legal, it'd violat the _spirit_ of the thing. its also not trivially possible. a package's postinst cannot call dpkg/apt since there is a lock in place. This is definitely a FAQ, though. don't use pine use mutt :P /me ducks -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgpaxXOjFv75n.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Michel Verdier wrote: [cut] Everybody knows that .deb are usually the last to be released to increase stability for .deb packages. When security is an issue .rpm and .deb are both tested and it would be great to have statistics to know which is the quicker to be installed and used. I must say, my subjective experience has been that rpm's are much faster to install something. Of course, it's also faster to throw my clothes on the floor, rather than put them in the hamper...
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
It's not too hard to find pine*.deb. Use Fast FTP Search. At 09:54 AM 5/19/00 +0800, Sanjeev \Ghane\ Gupta wrote: Because Univ of Washington doesn't allow modified tarballs to be distributed, and you have to modify the tarball's paths to be Debian compliant. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Try: pt-get install pine It'll give youenough information to get a bit further Ron Rademaker PS. Damn when is someone going to read apt-ge's FM!!, perhaps we'll just have to put a few pages with apt-get info during install on the users screen, the amount of question that has to do with it are (mostly, exceptly for some) just TOO EASY!!! On Fri, 19 May 2000, Chris Wagner wrote: It's not too hard to find pine*.deb. Use Fast FTP Search. At 09:54 AM 5/19/00 +0800, Sanjeev \Ghane\ Gupta wrote: Because Univ of Washington doesn't allow modified tarballs to be distributed, and you have to modify the tarball's paths to be Debian compliant. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++ -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Jeremy == Jeremy Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jeremy Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) Jeremy This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a Jeremy lot of mass installs. The best way to do that that I've found so far is to set up a box with two removable hard drive racks, install and _configure_ everything on one drive, then use `cfdisk', `mkswap', and `mke2fs' to partition and format the second drive. Use `cpio' from a script to copy everything from the master drive to the copy, then run the appropriate Lilo command to make that copy bootable. You can then mount it in another machine and it's ready to go. You have to filter some things out when you copy. See below. Another way to do it would be to create a tar archive, useing find | grep -v -f exclude-patterns | cpio, name it `base2_2.tgz' and put it in place on an intranet web server where you can point the Debian installer's netfetch... Then you can install several machines at once over the LAN... in theory. This is just a starter... I have not done this much yet myself, since I don't have extra hardware to work with and really need to spend my time on reading and studies. I have done it from drive to drive using `cpio' to install the filesystem snapshot, but have not done it by naming a tar format archive as base and using the debian-boot installer. It might just work. NFS mounting the server directory where the `cpio' or `tar' archive sits might work fine also. You could burn a bootable CD with the archive on it, and on the bootable's root.bin, have `sfdisk' etc. and a script that automaticly partitions, formats, and installs the archive. It might be simpler to try the netfetch/dbootstrap approach though. You can make a copy of the system like this... it will create a `cpio' archive... substitute `ustar' for `crc' to make a `tar' compatible archive. RTFM's... you're on your own. 88 #!/bin/bash find / -print0 | grep --invert-match --extended-regexp --null-data --file=/root/make-tarball.exclude-patterns | cpio --create --format=crc --null --reset-access-time --block-size=10 | gzip --best /tmp/system-snapshot_$(date +%Y.%m.%d).cpio.crc.gz 88 You may need to tweak this some. (NO WARRANTEE) make-tarball.exclude-patterns 88 ^/proc/.* ^/tmp/.* ^/lost+found ^/boot/lost+found ^/var/cache/apache/.* ^/var/cache/apt/.*\.deb ^/var/log/.*\.log ^/var/log/\(amanda\|apache\|gdm\|ksymoops\|mailman\|news\|sendfile\|wu-ftpd\)/.* ^/var/log/\(syslog\|smb\|nmb\|messages\|mail\|lpr\|debug\|dmesg\).* ^/var/lock/\.LCK.* ^/var/run/.*\.pid ^/var/run/\(ndc\|utmp\) ^/var/samba/.* \.bash_history \.gnome-errors .*~ /\.saves-.* /\.#.* /\.netscape/cache/.* -- Those who do not study Lisp are doomed to reimplement it - Poorly. A few months in the laboratory often saves several hours at the library. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl M. Hegbloom)
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Chris == Chris Wagner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Chris For mass installs, just make a standard issue CD, boot from that CD, and Chris copy over the OS. Or you could even make a disk image and dd it onto the Chris hard drive. That assumes you have the same hard drive in all the machines. Chris You can turn a 20GB drive into a 10GB drive. :) But even if you have 4 or 5 Chris different hard drives in your organization, using disk images will still Chris save you tons of time. Thats what we do at GE, if somebody has a funky Chris problem with their machine, we don't reinstall Windows and all the apps, we Chris just reimage the hard disk. It's much better to `cfdisk', `mkswap', `mke2fs' the drive, then use `cpio' to copy the filesystems. See my other message for more detail. This works even when the drives are not the same size, and when the partitioning structure is different. You can run the `cpio' across the net too, afaik. (I know it works over NFS.) -- Those who do not study Lisp are doomed to reimplement it - Poorly. A few months in the laboratory often saves several hours at the library. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl M. Hegbloom)
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Steve == Steve Morocho [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Steve I agree, rpm is not a piece of crap. deb packages are a Steve lot harder to create for the novice users. There is not Steve much documentation to help in this area either. Also, when Steve updates are released .debs are usually the last to be Steve released (because someone usually has to hack an .rpm or Steve something similar) When security is an issue, .rpms are Steve usually quicker to be released and thus should never be Steve discounted. It is fast becoming the standard package Steve system in the industry. Point to ponder: Are these really statements of fact, or are they just marketeering claims from press releases? -- Those who do not study Lisp are doomed to reimplement it - Poorly. A few months in the laboratory often saves several hours at the library. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl M. Hegbloom)
Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
[...] KMH The best way to do that that I've found so far is to set up KMH a box with two removable hard drive racks, install and KMH _configure_ everything on one drive, then use `cfdisk', KMH `mkswap', and `mke2fs' to partition and format the second KMH drive. [...] I do a possibly non-kosher thing similar to the above. I tar everything up once it is set up and stick the tar file[s] into a SCSI drive. I have a box that boots from this SCSI drive and has IDE drawers and a kernel with IDE support built as modules. I then hot-swap IDE drives, sfdisk, mke2fs, mount and un-tar without bringing down the machine. Insmoding the ide modules after switching the drives on and rmmoding before removing them seems to work fine. Never lost a drive yet, but the largest drives I worked with under this scheme were 4.3G. With the newer/larger drives, you'd probably need to make sure LILO and the BIOS agree on a geometry for the drive to be actually bootable (dunno the incantation for that yet!). cheers, BM
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Hi..
I worked on debian (first private than at work) and redhat (and SuSe, only
for money :), and my personal opinion ist, that debian Packages are much
more smoother to handle than rpm's.
As long as you don't build your own Packages. Mostly i can use make-kpkg. :)
to make my kernel-images. I create a .deb-Package once or twice for internal
purpose, and it was , uhm, not thaat easy...
Nowadays i just try apt-get install ... and most times i get what i want
out of those 4500 available packages on the debian network. Same thing with
rpm-find was a lot more work.
And at last, the package format will become more and more superfluous, the
more Linux will be used and software will become available for it, due to
the fact that someone will convert it from one fromat to another and
developers become familar with the various packages formats.
Until then i will stick to debian. A point of view thet developed in the
last years of Linux experience.
For an one-time installation or a devolping computer it's no matter which
one you use. The most time you will spent with configuring the system.
For mass-installations it always dd from an pre-cooked diskimage. An the
diskimage make no difference between RPM and deb.
But for more than one system apt upgrade is really easy to keep all the
systems up to date.
BTW, M$ wants to get an patent on apt, as i read on /. a few days ago...
In short:
RPM:
- There are more flavors of it, at last in the internal stucture.
SuSe's are different from RedHat from
- No (simple) netinstaller. There is rpm-find and alikes, but no
relieable infrastructure on the net.
+ Easy to make for users.
+ A new package ist build fast. Useful e.g. for bugfixes.
- The {pre,post}-{inst,remove} Sktripts are poor.
+ rpm -bb .. build a rpm from a source dist. (Now in deb too)
+ Industry Standard. [Just because it's easy to create, not because
it's good :-) ]
apt+deb:
+ Good infrastructure on the net. Mirrors, structured directories,
naming convention, etc.
+ easy use. just apt {install,remove} Get all of them from
the net. 4500 now, i think.
+ Sophisticated {post,pre}-{inst,remove} skripts and many little
helpers (update-rd.d etc)
+ Handles configuration files in a special way.
- Hard to build. There is a large doc about this task , but it still
takes a long time to learn.
--
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[programmierung]
theresienstraße 29 / IV
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Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 10:42:17AM +0200, Andreas Rabus wrote: - Hard to build. There is a large doc about this task , but it still takes a long time to learn. so does system administration for *nix. as it should be, learning takes time and is something no one should ever shy away from. while learning to admin NT is faster, you don't really end up learning to do much other then reboot and reinstall till it works. programming also takes time to learn, the more time you take to learn the better the results. the thing with RPM, while it may be easier for any monkey with a keyboard to make a .rpm, those .rpms often have about as much quality as you could expect from something made by a monkey. when i used redhat i encounted many very broken .rpms, some of which literally damaged my system. personally i would prefer to build a package from source and install it in /usr/local/ then to get some easy to install but very broken .rpm made by someone who does not really have a clue how to properly build packages. I also believe that packaging systems lacking a unified, and certified set of developers (like the debian project itself is) to make policy compliant packages will continue to be the miserable mess that redhat.com/contrib/ is. IMO upstream authors should not be making .debs or .rpms unless they are prepared to truely learn how its done and make policy compliant packages, if they cannot or will not spend the time learning the art of packaging then they should leave it to someone who can. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgpuMtIqE7702.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
The monkeys ar not very polite, but ... :) My experience is not that bad, but some of the rpm i installed were a real mess, too. But i liked to see some companies to release there software in various flavours of package formats. ar PS: you never learn NT. If you learnd on Version, you must use the next, which is different...
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 11:19:31AM +0200, Andreas Rabus wrote: The monkeys ar not very polite, but ... :) considering the quality of most .rpms i found in places like /contrib i don't think that is at all unfair. ;-) `monkeys' is about as polically correct as your going to get from me, considering the alternative descriptors i typically use i think monkeys is being nice :P My experience is not that bad, but some of the rpm i installed were a real mess, too. But i liked to see some companies to release there software in various flavours of package formats. well if you mean commercial companies they have plenty of money to pay someone to learn how to package things correctly. C is not very easy to use either and they pay people to do that [relativly] right (depending on the vendor) however i find it annoying that any company would release software in only one package format, many people (including me) like slackware which does not use any package manager (actually rather refreshing at times) the good old tarball should always be an option. debs are hard to make, i find that a FEATURE not a bug, if easier to make debs simply means more monkeys making debs ill take make su 'make install' thank you very much ;-) ar PS: you never learn NT. If you learnd on Version, you must use the next, which is different... hehe yes that is true, but what is also true is this (as a friend of mine puts it): microsoft likes to keep their users in the dark, and their administrators not too much brighter. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgpGQr1JJ5Uxe.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Previously Chip Salzenberg wrote: Actually, from what I've been told, rpm has at least one serious technical flaw: The order of execution for pre-install and post-install scripts is nonsensical for upgrades. I wouldn't call it nonsensical, but the way dpkg does it is definitely more robust. I need to take another close look at how rpm and dpkg differ in this respect anyway, so if people are interested in the little details I might be willing to write a little comparison about it.. Wichert. -- _ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D | pgpIiusHQV4L7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Steve Morocho [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : | I agree, rpm is not a piece of crap. deb packages are a lot harder to | create for the novice users. There is not much documentation to help in | this area either. Also, when updates are released .debs are usually the | last to be released (because someone usually | has to hack an .rpm or something similar) When security is an issue, | .rpms are usually quicker to be released and thus should never be | discounted. It is fast becoming the standard package system in the | industry. .deb are perhaps harder to create but some tools reduce this creation to a simple make once all is installed. There is perhaps not much documentation but : # ls /usr/man/man1/dh*|wc -l 30 Everybody knows that .deb are usually the last to be released to increase stability for .deb packages. When security is an issue .rpm and .deb are both tested and it would be great to have statistics to know which is the quicker to be installed and used. .deb is already a standard package system in the industry. And again it would be nice to have statistics to confirm this purely subjective statement :) -- o-o [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michel Verdier) http://www.chez.com/mverdier
Re[2]: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Thursday, May 18, 2000, 5:16:08 AM, Michel wrote: .deb is already a standard package system in the industry. And again it would be nice to have statistics to confirm this purely subjective statement :) Purely anecdotal, but Earthlink uses dpkg and deb as their internal format for binary distribution for servers. Not much in the way of Debian machines, just the packaging format. :) -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 02:16:08PM +0200, Michel Verdier wrote: | deb packages are a lot harder to create for the novice users. There is | not much documentation to help in this area either. There is perhaps not much documentation but : # ls /usr/man/man1/dh*|wc -l 30 You people probably haven't heard of things such as `apt-get source -b foo' or the New Maintainers' Guide (in `maint-guide' package or online at http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ /plug)? -- Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
Re: Re[2]: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, 18 May 2000, Steve Lamb wrote: Purely anecdotal, but Earthlink uses dpkg and deb as their internal format for binary distribution for servers. Not much in the way of Debian machines, just the packaging format. :) Apple's DarwinOS also uses the dpkg tools. (So maybe Apple OS X will start using them too?) http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7Ebks7g/packages.html Jeremy C. Reed http://www.reedmedia.net http://bsd.reedmedia.net
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Most of the answers I've been getting on this subject seem like total hacks, which may work but really are tricks to doing this. I was really looking for something within debian that's built to do kickstart type installations. Although what you suggest may work, it leave little flexibility between machines and also takes a lot more work then I was hoping to do. For example, I have 20 machines at a co location I need to go install. Right now with Red Hat I can take my laptop, slap a floppy in each machine, turn 'em on, 5 minutes later I have 20 fully configured machines ready to rock. Also if I use DHCP and place my kick start config file on the server, I could literally have 20 different configurations for each machine and never have to touch a key. This is a part of Red Hat, no tricks have to be done, all you need is a proper ks.cfg file and a central place where the distro comes from, usually over nfs for convenience. YOu can't beat that when doing large installations. To do what I need to do in Debian seems that it would take a very long time, even hours, which is not fun if you've ever spent time at a co location. It seems a lot of Debian users are developers and in this case I'm sure Debian is perfect, but Red Hat's kickstart allows me to see my wife at night (not really, but you know what I mean). -jeremy Jeremy == Jeremy Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jeremy Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) Jeremy This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a Jeremy lot of mass installs. The best way to do that that I've found so far is to set up a box with two removable hard drive racks, install and _configure_ everything on one drive, then use `cfdisk', `mkswap', and `mke2fs' to partition and format the second drive. Use `cpio' from a script to copy everything from the master drive to the copy, then run the appropriate Lilo command to make that copy bootable. You can then mount it in another machine and it's ready to go. You have to filter some things out when you copy. See below. Another way to do it would be to create a tar archive, useing find | grep -v -f exclude-patterns | cpio, name it `base2_2.tgz' and put it in place on an intranet web server where you can point the Debian installer's netfetch... Then you can install several machines at once over the LAN... in theory. This is just a starter... I have not done this much yet myself, since I don't have extra hardware to work with and really need to spend my time on reading and studies. I have done it from drive to drive using `cpio' to install the filesystem snapshot, but have not done it by naming a tar format archive as base and using the debian-boot installer. It might just work. NFS mounting the server directory where the `cpio' or `tar' archive sits might work fine also. You could burn a bootable CD with the archive on it, and on the bootable's root.bin, have `sfdisk' etc. and a script that automaticly partitions, formats, and installs the archive. It might be simpler to try the netfetch/dbootstrap approach though. You can make a copy of the system like this... it will create a `cpio' archive... substitute `ustar' for `crc' to make a `tar' compatible archive. RTFM's... you're on your own. 88 #!/bin/bash find / -print0 | grep --invert-match --extended-regexp --null-data --file=/root/make-tarball.exclude-patterns | cpio --create --format=crc --null --reset-access-time --block-size=10 | gzip --best /tmp/system-snapshot_$(date +%Y.%m.%d).cpio.crc.gz 88 You may need to tweak this some. (NO WARRANTEE) make-tarball.exclude-patterns 88 ^/proc/.* ^/tmp/.* ^/lost+found ^/boot/lost+found ^/var/cache/apache/.* ^/var/cache/apt/.*\.deb ^/var/log/.*\.log ^/var/log/\(amanda\|apache\|gdm\|ksymoops\|mailman\|news\|sendfile\|wu-ftpd\)/.* ^/var/log/\(syslog\|smb\|nmb\|messages\|mail\|lpr\|debug\|dmesg\).* ^/var/lock/\.LCK.* ^/var/run/.*\.pid ^/var/run/\(ndc\|utmp\) ^/var/samba/.* \.bash_history \.gnome-errors .*~ /\.saves-.* /\.#.* /\.netscape/cache/.* -- http://www.xxedgexx.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, 18 May 2000, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Chip Salzenberg wrote: Actually, from what I've been told, rpm has at least one serious technical flaw: The order of execution for pre-install and post-install scripts is nonsensical for upgrades. I wouldn't call it nonsensical, but the way dpkg does it is definitely more robust. I need to take another close look at how rpm and dpkg differ in this respect anyway, so if people are interested in the little details I might be willing to write a little comparison about it.. Wichert. I, for one, would be very interested in this comparison. My company has started using Linux in a pretty big way, kind of at my instigation. Because I was the only Linux guy, we used Debian of course :). But because a lot of my colleagues were new to Linux and found the Debian install to be much less slick than Red Hat, I was under attack as to my choice. A lot of what makes Debian cool is appreciated only after some time with it.
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Are you aware of this? http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ -- Mike On 2000-05-18 at 13:55 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: It seems a lot of Debian users are developers and in this case I'm sure Debian is perfect, but Red Hat's kickstart allows me to see my wife at night (not really, but you know what I mean).
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
I would agree most of the proposed solutions are quick hacks. The fact is, we won't be natively supporting bulk installation until Woody. And even that is in question. As I understand it, the proposed Woody install system is debconf based; moreover, debconf can have different backends for receiving configuration info, for instance, an LDAP backend, or a backend that munges an XML file from a web server. Yes, vapor vapor vapor but that's the right way to do it if you ask me. Hopefully debconf will be _de rigeur_ for any package requiring configuration info at pkg install time in Woody, so what we would have is really a general solution rather than just a partial or hack solution. -- .Adam Di [EMAIL PROTECTED]URL:http://www.onShore.com/
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Agreed that this seems technically sound, but it would be really nice to have this Real Soon Now. I think it might be reasonably possible to backport this from Woody into Potato fairly soon after the release of Potato. The fact is that an automatic installation system will be really hard to test on the unstable tree. I am not proposing that something like this should really be called stable, but if it could be made compatible with the stable distribution (then Potato) that would be very helpful. -- Mike On 2000-05-18 at 19:32 -0400, Adam Di Carlo wrote: The fact is, we won't be natively supporting bulk installation until Woody. And even that is in question. As I understand it, the proposed Woody install system is debconf based; moreover, debconf can have different backends for receiving configuration info, for instance, an LDAP backend, or a backend that munges an XML file from a web server.
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Most of the answers I've been getting on this subject seem like total hacks, which may work but really are tricks to doing this. I was really looking for something within debian that's built to do kickstart type installations. huh? what do you think kickstart is? it's the same kind of total hack - the difference is that you have to do it RedHat's way whether you like it or not, and it pretends to be easy enough to use that you don't need to know what you're doing to run it. personally, i think that anyone who needs to mass-build machines *SHOULD* know exactly what they are doing. i wouldn't trust any machine built by someone who needed such point-and-click tools. Although what you suggest may work, it leave little flexibility between machines and also takes a lot more work then I was hoping to do. actually, it leaves a lot of flexibility between machines. use ed or 'perl -i' scripts to automatically edit config files in place. For example, I have 20 machines at a co location I need to go install. Right now with Red Hat I can take my laptop, slap a floppy in each machine, turn 'em on, 5 minutes later I have 20 fully configured machines ready to rock. you can do the same thing with debian...just install the nfs server package on your laptop. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Ethan Benson wrote: On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 10:42:17AM +0200, Andreas Rabus wrote: I've only been using Linux since Feb. , so at the local LUG I usually just listen to the discussions and take in as much as I can. The people there (LUG) are about 80% RedHat users with the rest divided btw SuSe and Mandrake, to my knowlege I'm the _only_ Debian user. When I querried the group about Debian back in Feb. they all said it was too hard,impossible to install, definately NOT for newbies . insert your derogitory remark here . So, when at the last meeting, people where buzzing about their personal trial and tribulations upgrading to RH 6.2 and someone asked me what I did (with regard to the upgrade ) and I told them: apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade and all those people who gave me kurt I don't know I use RH answers to my questions in the past, and admonished me to install RH instead of working out the newbie blues with Debian, just stood there slack-jawed, and I didn't say a word. Truly, the people of Debian are to be commended , their product is decidedly first rate! Later, Dave - Hard to build. There is a large doc about this task , but it still takes a long time to learn. so does system administration for *nix. as it should be, learning takes time and is something no one should ever shy away from. while learning to admin NT is faster, you don't really end up learning to do much other then reboot and reinstall till it works. programming also takes time to learn, the more time you take to learn the better the results. the thing with RPM, while it may be easier for any monkey with a keyboard to make a .rpm, those .rpms often have about as much quality as you could expect from something made by a monkey. when i used redhat i encounted many very broken .rpms, some of which literally damaged my system. personally i would prefer to build a package from source and install it in /usr/local/ then to get some easy to install but very broken .rpm made by someone who does not really have a clue how to properly build packages. I also believe that packaging systems lacking a unified, and certified set of developers (like the debian project itself is) to make policy compliant packages will continue to be the miserable mess that redhat.com/contrib/ is. IMO upstream authors should not be making .debs or .rpms unless they are prepared to truely learn how its done and make policy compliant packages, if they cannot or will not spend the time learning the art of packaging then they should leave it to someone who can. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 01:24:26PM -0700, Stephen A. Witt wrote: A lot of what makes Debian cool is appreciated only after some time with it. also, a lot of what debian does is only appreciated after you've had the misfortune of working with some other distros for a while...then you really appreciate debian's sanity. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
At 09:55 PM 5/17/00 -0700, Karl M. Hegbloom wrote: copy everything from the master drive to the copy, then run the appropriate Lilo command to make that copy bootable. You can then mount it in another machine and it's ready to go. You have to filter some things out when you copy. See below. You can't do that, I've tried it before. Lilo can't be installed on any secondary disk. Don't ask me why because I don't know. There's a HOWTO about it. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 05:54:54PM -0400, Mike Bilow wrote: Are you aware of this? http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ Another tool to do this is Replicator. Sorry, but I don't a link nearby. Search for it in google. On 2000-05-18 at 13:55 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: It seems a lot of Debian users are developers and in this case I'm sure Debian is perfect, but Red Hat's kickstart allows me to see my wife at night (not really, but you know what I mean). -- Pedro Guerreiro UIN: 48533103 Universidade do Algarve (EST) - Campus da Penha - 8000 Faro - PORTUGAL GPG: 0xCF32D4E7F506 DDF4 0B92 247D B8E6 13BA A6DB 9E3A CF32 D4E7
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
If kickstart is a red hat package, you can install it on debian using alien. Then you can use red hat's kickstart to install debian. :) At 01:55 PM 5/18/00 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Most of the answers I've been getting on this subject seem like total hacks, which may work but really are tricks to doing this. I was really looking for something within debian that's built to do kickstart type installations. Although what you suggest may work, it leave little flexibility between machines and also takes a lot more work then I was hoping to do. Only for the initial setup. Once your base install is made, a few scripts written, it can become 100% automatic. It's just not 100% automatic out of the box. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Hmm, I don't agree here. Kickstart is a way of automating the tasks already involved with a manual install. It does what it's supposed to do quite well and actually with the flexibility available, I rarely encounter a situation that requires more custom things. Hacks can be included in kickstart during the %post procedure where you can basically write your script to do whatever. I've been using Linux long enough that I don't need to use the hacker way around things for all purposes. For me it's the bottom line. Kickstart lets me setup a lot of machines very quickly with pretty much limitless control over each install. Kickstart is part of anaconda and it is design for what it does, slapping cpio tar and all the other tools you can pass an argument to is just a mess. -jeremy On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Most of the answers I've been getting on this subject seem like total hacks, which may work but really are tricks to doing this. I was really looking for something within debian that's built to do kickstart type installations. huh? what do you think kickstart is? it's the same kind of total hack - the difference is that you have to do it RedHat's way whether you like it or not, and it pretends to be easy enough to use that you don't need to know what you're doing to run it. personally, i think that anyone who needs to mass-build machines *SHOULD* know exactly what they are doing. i wouldn't trust any machine built by someone who needed such point-and-click tools. Although what you suggest may work, it leave little flexibility between machines and also takes a lot more work then I was hoping to do. actually, it leaves a lot of flexibility between machines. use ed or 'perl -i' scripts to automatically edit config files in place. For example, I have 20 machines at a co location I need to go install. Right now with Red Hat I can take my laptop, slap a floppy in each machine, turn 'em on, 5 minutes later I have 20 fully configured machines ready to rock. you can do the same thing with debian...just install the nfs server package on your laptop. craig -- craig sanders -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.xxedgexx.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Can I ask why debian doesn't include pine? Just curious. I know Debian has a very strict rule base on the packages it includes but every distro I have even installed always included pine and I was just wondering the reason behind not doing that with Debian. -jeremy On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 01:24:26PM -0700, Stephen A. Witt wrote: A lot of what makes Debian cool is appreciated only after some time with it. also, a lot of what debian does is only appreciated after you've had the misfortune of working with some other distros for a while...then you really appreciate debian's sanity. craig -- craig sanders -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.xxedgexx.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Well it's funny you brought that up because I was considering just making one huge rpm of debian and then using kickstart. Kickstart is a part of Red Hat's install, Anaconda, not really an rpm but I get your point. -jeremy If kickstart is a red hat package, you can install it on debian using alien. Then you can use red hat's kickstart to install debian. :) At 01:55 PM 5/18/00 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Most of the answers I've been getting on this subject seem like total hacks, which may work but really are tricks to doing this. I was really looking for something within debian that's built to do kickstart type installations. Although what you suggest may work, it leave little flexibility between machines and also takes a lot more work then I was hoping to do. Only for the initial setup. Once your base install is made, a few scripts written, it can become 100% automatic. It's just not 100% automatic out of the box. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| +???+ -- http://www.xxedgexx.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Can I ask why debian doesn't include pine? Just curious. I know Debian The license for pine doesn't allow you to redistribute modified binaries (e.g., fix a bug in the source, compile it, and redistribute the executable you get from this). Therefore, it can't be included as part of Debian -- it doesn't meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines at http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines. Besides which, we have to make patches to pine to get it to put its files in the right place, etc. on a Debian system, and once we make those patches, we're not allowed to redistribute the compiled program anyway! Other distros that include Pine must obviously therefore compile without making patches, or have arranged other (special) redistribution terms with the University of Washington, or are simply violating the copyright. We do include the pine source, and a patch that users can use to build their own Debian-ish binaries. As a matter of fact, apt will download and build the package for you: apt-get --compile source pine4-src ... when this is done, you should have some .deb files you can install via dpkg -i. Will -- | [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/ | |PGP Public Key: http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/index.html#pgpkey| --
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Jeremy, Because Univ of Washington doesn't allow modified tarballs to be distributed, and you have to modify the tarball's paths to be Debian compliant. So download the pine-src.deb , the pine-src-diffs.deb , and complile. Do not upload or share the resulting files. Regards - Original Message - From: Jeremy Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stephen A. Witt [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Debian User debian-user@lists.debian.org; debian-isp@lists.debian.org; debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 9:29 AM Subject: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info. Can I ask why debian doesn't include pine? Just curious. I know Debian has a very strict rule base on the packages it includes but every distro I have even installed always included pine and I was just wondering the reason behind not doing that with Debian. -jeremy On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 01:24:26PM -0700, Stephen A. Witt wrote: A lot of what makes Debian cool is appreciated only after some time with it. also, a lot of what debian does is only appreciated after you've had the misfortune of working with some other distros for a while...then you really appreciate debian's sanity. craig -- craig sanders -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.xxedgexx.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
[Trimmed extraneous debian-isp and debian-dpkg cc:'s, hope that's enough] On Thu, 18 May 2000, Chris Wagner wrote: At 09:55 PM 5/17/00 -0700, Karl M. Hegbloom wrote: copy everything from the master drive to the copy, then run the appropriate Lilo command to make that copy bootable. You can then mount it in another machine and it's ready to go. You have to filter some things out when you copy. See below. You can't do that, I've tried it before. Lilo can't be installed on any secondary disk. Don't ask me why because I don't know. There's a HOWTO about it. Here's a URL that explains how to install LILO onto a drive other than the boot drive. Use the poorly documented features of lilo, disk= and bios=: Installing hdc to Boot as hda and Using bios= http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/LILO-4.html -- David Manifold [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bespin.dhs.org/~dem/ This message is placed in the public domain.
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 09:29:03PM -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Can I ask why debian doesn't include pine? Just curious. because it's a violation of pine's license to distribute modified binaries. pine is non-free. debian distributes a pine-src package (in non-free) which contains the pine source code plus debian patches plus a script to auto-build. at least, we used to...haven't bothered with pine for ages because mutt is so much better (and free). I know Debian has a very strict rule base on the packages it includes but every distro I have even installed always included pine and I was just wondering the reason behind not doing that with Debian. the fact that just about every other distribution is willing to violate the licensing terms for pine is no reason for debian to do the same. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Mass install / Autoinstall (Was: Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.)
Craig == Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For example, I have 20 machines at a co location I need to go install. Right now with Red Hat I can take my laptop, slap a floppy in each machine, turn 'em on, 5 minutes later I have 20 fully configured machines ready to rock. Craig you can do the same thing with debian...just install the nfs server Craig package on your laptop. I think that with `Woody' we'll have something as good as or better than KickStart. Read up on `debconf', and think about what I said about creating a custom Debian `baseX_X.tgz'. -- Those who do not study Lisp are doomed to reimplement it - Poorly. A few months in the laboratory often saves several hours at the library. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Karl M. Hegbloom)
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 06:48:02PM -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: I'm a long time Red Hat user. Basically the company I'm working for is currently using Red Hat but for some reason they're considering switching to Debian. I personally don't have any experience with Debian abd honestly I'm open to anything but I was hoping for some positive feedback from people who have used both Red Hat and Debian. My main interests are: Dpkg vs RPM Both managability and build packages. I have heard a lot of good things about dpkg. as others have said dpkg/apt to RPM is to GNU/Linux to DOS. Customization of the distro We do a lot of customization to our distro. Can this easily be done with debian? much easier then redhat! unlike redhat your config files are never overwritten and /usr/local is never touched by the package system (except some directories are created there) you can also make your own .debs if you wish. Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. nobody has mentioned this trick yet so i will, it works very well for both replication and restoration after disaster (*cough* kernel 2.2.13 *cough*) install the base system, run dselect/tasksel to get the packages you want installed, once that is done run: dpkg --get-selections \* selections.master then on your next machine install the base system (easy) and once that is done instead of running tasksel/dselect again run: dpkg --set-selections selections.master then run dselect update and install but not select. you get the exact same set of package installed. its not quite unattended and automatic but it does pretty much what kickstart does: saves you from selecting all the packages you want over and over again for each machine. once you have used debian you will never touch a redhat system again. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgpxWMETU8FyC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 08:44:38PM -0700, David Lynn wrote: I agree - dpkg and apt are great compared to rpm's. However, that's all assuming that there are debian packages out there that are up to date (which they're generally not). But this seems to be the only major drawback I've found to Debian. I don't find this to be true. If you need the latest bleeding edge program, go with the unstable tree which has historically proven to be more stable than Red Hat Releases. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 10:43:20PM -0400, Chris Wagner wrote: At 07:29 PM 5/16/00 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. For mass installs, just make a standard issue CD, boot from that CD, and copy over the OS. Or you could even make a disk image and dd it onto the hard drive. That assumes you have the same hard drive in all the machines. You can turn a 20GB drive into a 10GB drive. :) But even if you have 4 or 5 different hard drives in your organization, using disk images will still save you tons of time. even better, you can make a tar.gz image of your standard install, stick it on an nfs server and then create a boot floppy with nfs support. when building a new box, boot with the floppy, partition the disk (scriptable using sfdisk), mount the nfs drive, untar the archive, and then run a script which customises whatever needs to be customised (e.g. hostname, IP address, etc). then run lilo to make it bootable from the hard disk. alternatively, put it on a CD-ROM and make that CD bootable - just insert the CD and reboot for a fully-automated install. say 10 meg or so for boot kernel utilities, leaves you up to around 640MB of compressed tar.gz containing your standard install file-system image. btw, this tar.gz idea is how the debian base system is installed on a machine in the first place. the only significant difference is that you're installing your own tar.gz system image rather than the standard base.tar.gz. automating debian installs is pretty easy - IF you have a good understanding of how debian works. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 08:44:18PM -0700, David Lynn wrote: I agree - dpkg and apt are great compared to rpm's. However, that's all assuming that there are debian packages out there that are up to date (which they're generally not). But this seems to be the only major drawback I've found to Debian. depends if you use stable or unstable. if you use stable, then many packages will be old versions. if you use unstable, then most packages will be the latest up-to-date versions. craig -- craig sanders
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 11:24:50PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 08:44:38PM -0700, David Lynn wrote: I agree - dpkg and apt are great compared to rpm's. However, that's all assuming that there are debian packages out there that are up to date (which they're generally not). But this seems to be the only major drawback I've found to Debian. I don't find this to be true. If you need the latest bleeding edge program, go with the unstable tree which has historically proven to be more stable than Red Hat Releases. I can not comment on the stability, but it is not always the case that unstable has the latest bleeding edge programs. I am using wxpython (or python-wxwin in Debian language) and while version 2.1.15 has been in used by a lot developers for a few weeks, the unstable version of Debian is still 2.1.11. In the past I had to install rpm-packages to get my hands on newer versions. I am not blaming the Debian developer. He has helped me in the past to try and eliminate some problems with the package. I know that Debian development comes from volunteers and if I had some more time and knowledge on this subject I would like to help with the development. Johann. -- J.H. Spies, Hugenotestraat 29, Posbus 80, Franschhoek, 7690, South Africa Tel/Faks 021-876-2337 Sel/Cell 082 898 1528(Johann) 082 255 2388(Hester) Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. John 11:25
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Bruce Sass [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : | On Wed, 17 May 2000, Matthew Dalton wrote: | I beleive it is possible to install a Debian system, configure/customise | it, and then repackage the deb packages using the customised files on | the system instead of the original default ones, using some provided | tools. | | Can anyone confirm this? I have not tried it myself, but I vaguely | remember reading it somewhere in the Slink documentation. | | You are thinking of dpkg-repack, it should also be possible to add and | remove files to/from the customized package. And to complete the trip, it is easy to build a debian packages repository, with dpkg-scanpackages, containing those customized packages. APT can then install them through local net. -- o-o [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michel Verdier) http://www.chez.com/mverdier
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 05:28:54PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 10:43:20PM -0400, Chris Wagner wrote: At 07:29 PM 5/16/00 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. For mass installs, just make a standard issue CD, boot from that CD, and copy over the OS. Or you could even make a disk image and dd it onto the hard drive. That assumes you have the same hard drive in all the machines. You can turn a 20GB drive into a 10GB drive. :) But even if you have 4 or 5 different hard drives in your organization, using disk images will still save you tons of time. even better, you can make a tar.gz image of your standard install, stick it on an nfs server and then create a boot floppy with nfs support. when building a new box, boot with the floppy, partition the disk (scriptable using sfdisk), mount the nfs drive, untar the archive, and then run a script which customises whatever needs to be customised (e.g. hostname, IP address, etc). then run lilo to make it bootable from the hard disk. This is what I did at BNL for maintaining the 'black wall' of 150 VALinux boxes. I built 1 box like I wanted, and made a tarball of it and put it out on a NFS server. Then I created a kernel with nfsroot and bootp support. As long as I know the MAC of the NIC in the maachine, you can boot, get all the network stuff assigned by the bootp server, and it nfs mounts a small root partition with a hacked up rcS script. This script partitions the disk using sfdisk, formats the partitions, mounts them, then nfs mounts the old image, untars it, then fiddles with the config files, runs lilo, and reboots. On the 350MB install, this takes about 5 minutes for the whole procedure. Now, with the bootp kernel, we never have to touch the machines again. If we update the image, we run a command on each box via ssh that copies the bootp kernel over the normal one, runs lilo, and reboots, and the whole thing runs by itself. We only have to touch the machine 1 time, to get it to boot off the floppy for the initial install. Tim -- Tim Sailer (at home) Coastal Internet, Inc. Network and Systems Operations PO Box 671 http://www.buoy.comRidge, NY 11961 [EMAIL PROTECTED]/[EMAIL PROTECTED](631) 476-3031
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Previously Chris Wagner wrote: RPM is a piece of crap compared to dpkg, and now we have apt (advanced package tool). Can we please not be so negative about rpm? I'll agree that dpkg is better (and of course I'm completely not biased here :), but rpm is not a piece of crap. Wichert. -- _ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D | pgpbY5dy1XEYm.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 08:44:15AM +0200, Johann Spies wrote: I don't find this to be true. If you need the latest bleeding edge program, go with the unstable tree which has historically proven to be more stable than Red Hat Releases. (or python-wxwin in Debian language) and while version 2.1.15 has been in used by a lot developers for a few weeks, the unstable version of Debian is still 2.1.11. In the past I had to install rpm-packages to get my hands on newer versions. Noe my use of the word need instead of the word want. Most people who run Linux want the latest version for pretty much no other reason than the bragging rights. OTOH, most people who run linux rarely /need/ the latest version. The only time I've personally seen someone /need/ the latest version of a program where the matter of a few weeks was not acceptable was when the FS code in FreeBSD had a massive bug in it that caused the kernel to panic on an ISP's main FTP server. They /needed/ the latest snapshot to see if it fixed their problem. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 02:55:33PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Can we please not be so negative about rpm? I'll agree that dpkg is better (and of course I'm completely not biased here :), but rpm is not a piece of crap. OK, in the light of trying to say something positive about rpm might I suggest to henceforth call it a piece of manure so at least people might think it is worthwhile in helping something grow... like having a growing respect for apt? :) -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 06:17:14AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 02:55:33PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Can we please not be so negative about rpm? I'll agree that dpkg is better (and of course I'm completely not biased here :), but rpm is not a piece of crap. OK, in the light of trying to say something positive about rpm might I suggest to henceforth call it a piece of manure so at least people might think it is worthwhile in helping something grow... like having a growing respect for apt? :) ROFL that would make a nice .sig if it weren't so long ;-) its quite true too, i had to go though a session with rpm after switching to debian and boy did it cause alot of swearing ;-) my respect for apt/dpkg certianly grew quite a bit. i then blew away that redhat based dist from my powerpc and installed potato... seriously though i think Wichert is just asking that we be a bit more professional when expressing our dislike for rpm, i suppose it is better if we don't look too much like raving lunatics (sp?) (even if we are :P) afterall its going to take alot of `professionalism' to get that silly LSB to stop `standardizing' on things like rpm... -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ pgp31G1taVXib.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 05:35:20AM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote: that would make a nice .sig if it weren't so long ;-) What? It is under 4 lines long. ;) -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I agree, rpm is not a piece of crap. deb packages are a lot harder to create for the novice users. There is not much documentation to help in this area either. Also, when updates are released .debs are usually the last to be released (because someone usually has to hack an .rpm or something similar) When security is an issue, .rpms are usually quicker to be released and thus should never be discounted. It is fast becoming the standard package system in the industry. Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Chris Wagner wrote: RPM is a piece of crap compared to dpkg, and now we have apt (advanced package tool). Can we please not be so negative about rpm? I'll agree that dpkg is better (and of course I'm completely not biased here :), but rpm is not a piece of crap. Wichert. -- _ / Generally uninteresting signature - ignore at your convenience \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D | --- Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I have to disagree there. I've found Debian packs to be extremely up to date, atleast on the security end. And even on routine maintanance, the lag is not that bad. At 08:44 PM 5/16/00 -0700, David Lynn wrote: I agree - dpkg and apt are great compared to rpm's. However, that's all assuming that there are debian packages out there that are up to date (which they're generally not). But this seems to be the only major drawback I've found to Debian. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Sorry, but I was so underwhelmed by rpm's capabilities and my reaction was so one sidedly negative that I can't describe it any other way. It is what I typed. At 02:55 PM 5/17/00 +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Chris Wagner wrote: RPM is a piece of crap compared to dpkg, and now we have apt (advanced package tool). Can we please not be so negative about rpm? I'll agree that dpkg is better (and of course I'm completely not biased here :), but rpm is not a piece of crap. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Folks, I have used dpkg, and been forced to use rpm, and rpm is just as good, more or less. The problem is that there is nothing equivalent to dselect or apt in RedHat. I rarely call dpkg directly, unless libc6 is stuck again ;-), but the nearest that RedHat has to a mid-level tool is GnoRPM, which wants gnome, which wants X, which is moving in the wrong direction for my firewall/mail server. -- Ghane - Original Message - From: Wichert Akkerman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Can we please not be so negative about rpm? I'll agree that dpkg is better (and of course I'm completely not biased here :), but rpm is not a piece of crap. Wichert.
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
According to Sanjeev Ghane Gupta: I have used dpkg, and been forced to use rpm, and rpm is just as good, more or less. Actually, from what I've been told, rpm has at least one serious technical flaw: The order of execution for pre-install and post-install scripts is nonsensical for upgrades. I leave further explanation to the experts ... assuming they can be trolled^Wenticed into answering. -- Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wanted to play hopscotch with the impenetrable mystery of existence, but he stepped in a wormhole and had to go in early. // MST3K
Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I'm a long time Red Hat user. Basically the company I'm working for is currently using Red Hat but for some reason they're considering switching to Debian. I personally don't have any experience with Debian abd honestly I'm open to anything but I was hoping for some positive feedback from people who have used both Red Hat and Debian. My main interests are: Dpkg vs RPM Both managability and build packages. I have heard a lot of good things about dpkg. Customization of the distro We do a lot of customization to our distro. Can this easily be done with debian? Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. Thanks -jeremy
Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I'm a long time Red Hat user. Basically the company I'm working for is currently using Red Hat but for some reason they're considering switching to Debian. I personally don't have any experience with Debian abd honestly I'm open to anything but I was hoping for some positive feedback from people who have used both Red Hat and Debian. My main interests are: Dpkg vs RPM Both managability and build packages. I have heard a lot of good things about dpkg. Customization of the distro We do a lot of customization to our distro. Can this easily be done with debian? Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. Thanks -jeremy
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Jeremy Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: JH Dpkg vs RPM JH Both managability and build packages. I have heard a lot JH of good things about dpkg. My experience has been that it can be extremely hard to upgrade a system from one RH release to another, and that RH is very bad about providing migration paths between releases. In contrast, it's easy to upgrade Debian machines (I track the unstable branch and do an upgrade every day or two), and Debian's APT tool can handle even the messiest system upgrades with only one or two user commands. Oh yeah, and I've never used a --force-* option with dpkg (unless some package in unstable was broken, but that usually cleans itself up every day or two). JH Customization of the distro JH We do a lot of customization to our distro. Can this easily JH be done with debian? Debian seems to be fairly tweak-friendly; dpkg makes an effort to not overwrite users' configuration files without advance notice. Building Debian packages takes a little work, but there are semiautomated tools that help a lot. JH Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) JH This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a JH lot of mass installs. This isn't quite there. IANADD, but my guess is that this functionality will probably appear (via APT and debconf) in a few months. The groundwork for this is still being written. -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/ Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal. -- Abra Mitchell
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
David Z Maze wrote: JH Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) JH This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a JH lot of mass installs. This isn't quite there. IANADD, but my guess is that this functionality will probably appear (via APT and debconf) in a few months. The groundwork for this is still being written. I beleive it is possible to install a Debian system, configure/customise it, and then repackage the deb packages using the customised files on the system instead of the original default ones, using some provided tools. Can anyone confirm this? I have not tried it myself, but I vaguely remember reading it somewhere in the Slink documentation. This feature would certainly go a long way towards what Jeremy is after. Matthew
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 07:55:16PM -0400, David Z Maze wrote: Debian seems to be fairly tweak-friendly; dpkg makes an effort to not overwrite users' configuration files without advance notice. Building Debian packages takes a little work, but there are semiautomated tools that help a lot. This is very developer dependant, howerver. Some developers think that their package is from the gods and us mortals must take comes down the pipe. With that attitude they feel that major changes in the architecture from one minor release to the next need not have its own warning. This is a problem because, as we all saw with ILOVEYOU, oft-repeated warnings are oft-ignored warnings because they are routine. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+-
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
Dpkg beats RPM hands down for anyone who has to actualy administer a number of boxes and wants everything as automatic as possible (for upgrades). As far as being able to customize the distro - go all out. You can of course edit config files at the vi level ;) There are also tools to take the administration of a large number of machines to an even higher level. I don't know if the mass installs is a possibility. I imagine it depends on your idea of an automated install. -Nathan On Tue, 16 May 2000, Jeremy Hansen wrote: I'm a long time Red Hat user. Basically the company I'm working for is currently using Red Hat but for some reason they're considering switching to Debian. I personally don't have any experience with Debian abd honestly I'm open to anything but I was hoping for some positive feedback from people who have used both Red Hat and Debian. My main interests are: Dpkg vs RPM Both managability and build packages. I have heard a lot of good things about dpkg. Customization of the distro We do a lot of customization to our distro. Can this easily be done with debian? Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. Thanks -jeremy -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
On Wed, 17 May 2000, Matthew Dalton wrote: I beleive it is possible to install a Debian system, configure/customise it, and then repackage the deb packages using the customised files on the system instead of the original default ones, using some provided tools. Can anyone confirm this? I have not tried it myself, but I vaguely remember reading it somewhere in the Slink documentation. You are thinking of dpkg-repack, it should also be possible to add and remove files to/from the customized package. later, Bruce
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
At 07:29 PM 5/16/00 -0400, Jeremy Hansen wrote: I'm a long time Red Hat user. Basically the company I'm working for is Sorry about that. :) Dpkg vs RPM RPM is a piece of crap compared to dpkg, and now we have apt (advanced package tool). It's a handler for dpkg, but it's intelligent. The killer feature is its ability to do *recursive upgrades of your entire box* in order, with dependacies. I had to use rpm once and I really felt hobbled by it's lack of information. For a real world example [TM], rpm tells you what *files* a package depends on while dpkg tells you what *packages* a package depends on. The latter is incredibly more useful. Another example, say you want to upgrade a package, but the new version depends on newer versions of other packages and maybe even a new pacakge. Apt will find out what packages you need, install them in order, and then install the package you want. Let's see rpm do that. Debian even has a utility to install rpm packages! So any custom legacy red had packs you have you can carry over into Debian. Customization of the distro Very easily. You can make .debs to your heart's content. Autoinstall (Red Hat's kickstart) This is also something fairly important. We need this as we do a lot of mass installs. For mass installs, just make a standard issue CD, boot from that CD, and copy over the OS. Or you could even make a disk image and dd it onto the hard drive. That assumes you have the same hard drive in all the machines. You can turn a 20GB drive into a 10GB drive. :) But even if you have 4 or 5 different hard drives in your organization, using disk images will still save you tons of time. Thats what we do at GE, if somebody has a funky problem with their machine, we don't reinstall Windows and all the apps, we just reimage the hard disk. +---+ |-=I T ' S P R I N C I P L E T H A T C O U N T S=- | |=- -=ALAN KEYES FOR PRESIDENT=- -=| | Balanced Budgets Personal Freedoms Morality Lower Tax | |=-- http://www.Keyes2000.com. --=| ++
Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.
I agree - dpkg and apt are great compared to rpm's. However, that's all assuming that there are debian packages out there that are up to date (which they're generally not). But this seems to be the only major drawback I've found to Debian. --d
