Re: ADV: Re: Is there a way to positively, uniquely identify which Debian release a program is running on?
On Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:54:03 -0400, Kris Deugau [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Frank Lichtenheld wrote: On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 02:51:27PM -0400, Kris Deugau wrote: (Mildly amusing sidenote to this discussion: I'm finally convincing the senior systems guy that Packages Are Good, and now developers for the upstream OS seem to be telling me Packages Are Useless, because I can't even count on a critical dependency being installed via the package system. g) ? I don't see that beeing said in the thread. Could you point out that for me? Hmm. Not explicitly stated, nor really implied, but several people commented that a system may have backported packages, packages from testing/unstable/experimental, software that's installed from source and which the package manager is therefore completely unaware of - in other words, no matter what you might find in /etc/debian_version or some other nominal reference, the configuration and binaries on the system may not resemble a stock install of that release at all. Taken to the extreme, that leads me to the conclusion that Packages Are Useless. g (Taken another couple of steps, it leads to Everyone should be running Linux From Scratch.) So, modular systems via packages that allow me to install a system according to my desires; in your world make packages useless? Upon my word, your logic seems wonderfully unique. manoj -- Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Author Unknown Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ADV: Re: Is there a way to positively, uniquely identify which Debian release a program is running on?
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 04:54:03PM -0400, Kris Deugau wrote: Hmm. Not explicitly stated, nor really implied, but several people commented that a system may have backported packages, packages from testing/unstable/experimental, software that's installed from source and which the package manager is therefore completely unaware of - in other words, no matter what you might find in /etc/debian_version or some other nominal reference, the configuration and binaries on the system may not resemble a stock install of that release at all. That's right. Taken to the extreme, that leads me to the conclusion that Packages Are Useless. g (Taken another couple of steps, it leads to Everyone should be running Linux From Scratch.) You got it completely backwards. The individual packages (and their versions) are what you _can_ depend on. A single release string can never give you enough information for what you want to achieve. And this is not specific to Debian at all; you get the same effects on RPM-based distros when you start installing packages from 3rd party RPM repositories. Gabor -- - MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute Hungarian Academy of Sciences - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ADV: Re: Is there a way to positively, uniquely identify which Debian release a program is running on?
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 02:51:27PM -0400, Kris Deugau wrote: (Mildly amusing sidenote to this discussion: I'm finally convincing the senior systems guy that Packages Are Good, and now developers for the upstream OS seem to be telling me Packages Are Useless, because I can't even count on a critical dependency being installed via the package system. g) ? I don't see that beeing said in the thread. Could you point out that for me? Gruesse, -- Frank Lichtenheld [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.djpig.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ADV: Re: Is there a way to positively, uniquely identify which Debian release a program is running on?
Frank Lichtenheld wrote: On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 02:51:27PM -0400, Kris Deugau wrote: (Mildly amusing sidenote to this discussion: I'm finally convincing the senior systems guy that Packages Are Good, and now developers for the upstream OS seem to be telling me Packages Are Useless, because I can't even count on a critical dependency being installed via the package system. g) ? I don't see that beeing said in the thread. Could you point out that for me? Hmm. Not explicitly stated, nor really implied, but several people commented that a system may have backported packages, packages from testing/unstable/experimental, software that's installed from source and which the package manager is therefore completely unaware of - in other words, no matter what you might find in /etc/debian_version or some other nominal reference, the configuration and binaries on the system may not resemble a stock install of that release at all. Taken to the extreme, that leads me to the conclusion that Packages Are Useless. g (Taken another couple of steps, it leads to Everyone should be running Linux From Scratch.) (I don't really think so, and I think the argument about The local admin may hack the system up until it resembles Swiss cheese so why bother doing x has been beaten well beyond death in other threads I've seen recently.) Mostly just an impression I got from the trend of some of the responses. -kgd, wondering how one would go about bootstrapping LFS raw from a stack of printout and a single modern desktop machine, with no source of precompiled executables. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
