[Hudlug] Debian and display settings

[Tim Bray]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> Hi, Tim.  I shan't bother changing it.  This is a temporary/experimental 
> install, so that I can assess it for use on a home lan server.  There's 
> simply no need for the latest and greatest, as long as I can work out 
> how to get security patches.  I hope to have time to look at that 
> today.

security patches in debian are really easy.

If during installation you said yes to include security sources, then
you just need to do:

apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

And your system will get updated.

Note that with Debian security patches, they backport the changes.  So
when you get a security upgrade they have only changed the little bit
needed to fix the bug.

If you didn't say yes to security sources, then you need to edit
/etc/apt/sources.list and makesure you have a line like

deb http://security.debian.org/ sarge/updates main


You can also install the cron-apt package to automatically install  updates.

apt-get install cron-apt

will install it for you.  By default it will do the update bit, and do
the downloading.
You still have to do apt-get upgrade to install.  A little config with
the cron-apt settings will make it upgrade as well - although this is
maybe a little scary.


Also see:

http://www.debian.org/security/

Also consider subscribing to  debian-security-announce mailing list, to
remind you when you need to upgrade.


Tim