[Preston] debian newbie

[Andrew King]

Hi there!

Things that spring to mind:

- The default prompt's different, so you might want to change the value 
of $PS1 in your login scripts.  (Just one of those things that puts you 
off if you don't happen to know about it.)
- Package Management - is different, as you'll probably know, but worth 
learning.  See my notes on APT at the end.
- KDE2 /always/ seems to install broken in at least Debian 3.0r0.  Does 
anyone else find this?  When it's starting, it just crashes on 
"Initiailising Perhipherals", or something like that.  To fix it, remove 
any occurence of " +kcminit" from /etc/kde2/kde2.sh.  I've had this on 
lots of different computers, and really dunno how/why it happened or got 
into 3.0r0 stable.  Weird.
- Debian doesn't as yet come with any graphical install.  Text is nice 
and simple though :)  The Debian 3.0r0 install (not the latest version, 
but the one I've got) seems to ask a few really random questions too 
about mime types and stuff.  BTW, when you boot off the CD, type "bf24" 
to install a 2.4 kernel, rather than the default 2.2 kernel.  (This 
might have been fixed after 3.0r0).
- Red Hat ships with Sendmail, Debian ships with Exim.  Carl Inglis (I 
think Carl's still around on the list somewhere) first suggested I have 
a look at Exim, and after using both, Exim definitely seems easier!  
Everything's done in /etc/exim/exim.conf, and there's also an 
"eximconfig" utility to help avoid having to edit the exim.conf file.
- If you find that some of your devices weren't detected, such as 
netcards or sound cards, and think it might be down to kernel modules, 
try first running 'modconf' as root.  It's a TUI that gives you a list 
of all available kernel modules and lets you insert/remove them there 
and then.  That often solves any such problems.
- You might be used to kudzu under Red Hat to sort out hardware 
detection for you.  Debian doesn't install it by default, but it's 
available in the archives with apt-get install kudzu.
- I /think/ the Debian forums, chatrooms, etc, are all known as being 
fairly friendly towards ppl rather than just waiting to find any excuse 
they can to bite your head off.

_APT Notes (hopefully devoid of HTML):_


    Basic Use

Install a piece of software named /program/, including all of it's 
dependencies:

apt-get install program

Remove /program/, and possibly things that depend on it:

apt-get remove program

Search to see if /software/ is available in the Debian archives:

apt-cache search software

Update your copy (catalogue) of the Debian archives:

apt-get update

Update packages installed on your system to the versions available in 
the Debian archives:

apt-get upgrade

Add the list of available packages on a Debian CD-ROM to your catalogue:

apt-cdrom add

Install a .deb package:

dpkg -i file.deb

List all packages installed on system:

dpkg -l

Give a count of how many packages are installed on the system:

dpkg -l | wc

Determine if any MySQL packages are installed on the system:

dpkg -l | grep -i mysql

Delete all downloaded .deb files stored on the system (in 
/var/cache/apt/archives IIRC):

apt-get clean

Re-run any questions asked by a package during install:

dpkg-reconfigure package

Re-run the setup for XFree86:

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

Find out the dependencies for a package:

apt-cache depends package

Find out information about a package:

apt-cache show package

Find out more information about a package:

apt-cache showpkg package

Find out what package a particular file belongs to:

dpkg -S filename

or:

apt-file search filename


    Setting up APT

Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list. Here's a sample file which, after 
running apt-get update, should cause the system to know how to retrieve 
packages stored in stable and testing on the primary UK mirror. deb 
ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable main

deb-src ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable main

deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian testing main
deb-src ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian testing main

#deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian unstable main
#deb-src ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian unstable main

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


    Source Packages

Download the source for a package:

apt-get source package

Download and build a source package:

apt-get -b source package

Install all (binary) packages required to build a particular source package:

apt-get build-dep package

Build a source package:

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

(Run apt-get install fakeroot if fakeroot isn't found. Run this command 
inside the subdirectory created by apt-get source package.)


    More Info

See the Debian APT HOWTO <http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto>, 
and various man pages.

See /usr/share/doc/<packagename> There should always be /something/ there.

Jon Hill wrote:

>Hi All
>
>I am strongly considering making the switch from RedHat to Debian for my 
>company servers. Could someone give me any tips and advice on some of the 
>major differences to be aware of. My usual server setup on RedHat has made 
>use of the RedHat network for updates but with a custom web environment build 
>from source of Apache, php, mod_perl, openssl, mod_ssl. I have also often 
>used Bastille for server 'hardening' but I believe that is a RedHat / 
>Mandrake product, is there something similar on Debian worth looking at. I am 
>just interested in a general discussion really.
>
>Jon
>
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