I recently installed Debian Linux 2.1 (slink?) and would like to automate the task of monitoring changes to installed packages. My plan was to set up a weekly cron job that runs something like:
apt-get update apt-get --download-only dist-upgrade I figured I'd get an e-mail every week describing what packages had changed, then I could manually install the ones I chose to. I figured "apt-get --simulate dist-upgrade" would also work, but with the download flag, I would have local copies of the files and the manual installation would go more quickly if/when I decided to do it. Here is my sources.list file: ----- begin sources.list ----- deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US ----- end sources.list ----- Here are my questions: 1. Given the structure of the http.us.debian.org website (http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/[contrib|main|non-free]/), does that sources.list file look right? The contents are unchanged from the original install of apt. "apt-get update" appears to work correctly, but I'm a little suspicious because the Packages down- loads are awfully fast (>2M in <5s, usually). 2. Note that I am monitoring only the stable release. I am assuming that "stable" <> "static", i.e., that the stable release is updated as bug fixes are implemented. Should I be monitoring an unstable or proposed- updates area instead? 3. Has anybody implemented a similar update scheme that works well for them? Should I just subscribe to debian-changes and do manual updates when appropriate? I apologize for my verbose posting (brevity is not one of my strong points :). Thank you for any help you can provide. Marc Mongeon
