[PLUG] - CentOS 5, + Debian Etch

Michael M. mcubed at slashmail.org
Wed Apr 18 09:18:15 UTC 2007


On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 10:14 -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 07:43:54 -0700
> "Michael M." <mcubed at slashmail.org> dijo:
> 
> > The Debian User list is pretty helpful with issues like that.  The
> > subscription page for all official Debian lists (there are lots of
> > them!) is here:
> > 
> > http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe
> > 
> > You probably want the plain ol' 'debian-user,' unless you want to test
> > out your Catalan, Icelandic, or Ukranian language skills. :-)
> 
> Good idea. Done. I gather there are no forums?

There are some around, but I'm not sure if any of them are sponsored by
Debian.  I'm not partial to web forums myself, I much prefer mailing
lists and usenet.  (Note that all the Debian mailing lists can be
accessed via gmane if you prefer nntp to email; also, I think you can
get to them via Google Groups.)  Debian is definitely mailing-list
centric.

Here are some Debian-specific rss feeds I'm subbed to, that I find
helpful:

http://www.debianadmin.com/
http://debaday.debian.net/
http://www.debian-administration.org/
http://planet.debian.org/

Another good feed, not Debian-specific, but often has excellent Debian
(and Ubuntu) and general Linux content:

http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/index.html

And some helpful websites:

http://www.debianhelp.org/
http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/index.php
http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Main_Page

And the official wiki:
http://wiki.debian.org/FrontPage


> > The officially unofficial repository for all evil proprietary stuff is
> > here:
> > 
> > http://www.debian-multimedia.org/
> > 
> > If you're sticking with Etch, you'll want to add the following to
> > your /etc/apt/sources.list:
> > 
> > deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main
> > 
> > That will get you access to flash, the packages you need to play back
> > commercial DVDs, w32codecs, and other stuff.
> > 
> > But maybe you knew that already.
> 
> Having used Ubuntu for some time I am familiar with adding
> repositories. I note that Etch does not have System > Administration >
> Software Sources, a handy little GUI tool for managing repositories
> that Edgy has. However, I knew I could do it in Synaptic as well.
> Unfortunately, I need the key and my attempt to retrieve it with wget
> failed with a 404:
> 
> wget http://www.debian-multimedia.org | sudo apt-key add -
> 
> But it's not critical. Synaptic lists 17,504 packages, so I probably
> have most stuff already. 


I've only ever edited my /etc/apt/sources.list by hand.  I'm not sure
why the apt-key failed.  There used to be explicit instructions on how
to install the GPG key on the debian-multimedia website (in the [1]
FAQ), but now all it says is:

   apt GPG key : 
   Install the debian-multimedia-keyring package.

So maybe that's all you need to do.

I'm a very big fan of aptitude (vs. synaptic or apt-get & related).  It
does everything, is copiously documented, and works with or without X
running.  Maybe I'm overly cautious, but I prefer doing the
update/upgrade thing without X running.  Sometimes there will be various
library upgrades that will end up requiring a restart of X anyway or
bork things up if you don't, so I just got in the habit of doing it from
a virtual terminal.  Aptitude's ncurses interface is as easy to use as a
GUI interface once you play with it a bit.


> > IMO, Debian testing is the sweet spot for desktop usage. 
> 
> After having fiddled over the past couple of weeks with various
> distros, including several RPM based distros, I think I have to agree
> in general about Debian. Nothing in the RPM world comes close to the
> ease of package management on Debian. I take back all the kvetches I
> voiced in the past about Synaptic. However, I think I'll stick with
> Etch for now. The purpose of the new computer is 1) to give me an
> alternate way to get on the net when I hose my laptop again (a regular
> occurrence) and, 2) to function as a network storage place for backups.
> 
> I'm not ready to commit fully to straight Debian Etch for the new
> computer. I plan to try out Feisty as soon as it is final, then I'll
> settle on something. Maybe I'll just use both as a dual boot.


Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that for me it's worth setting aside
some gigabytes for something I *know* will work.  Gives me peace of
mind.  If all else fails, I can always boot into Etch.  And another
route to check out, as an alternative to upgrading to testing, is
backports:

http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php

It's pretty useless right now because Etch was just released, but it'll
get back up to speed soon enough.  It's a painless way to get new
versions of popular packages into Etch.


> Speaking of backups, my laptop has not been seriously backed up for
> some time. All I have is temp backups to my thumb drive. So this
> morning I got NFS working so the new computer can see the laptop.
> (Thanks to William at the Clinic for teaching me how to get that
> going). However, I still need to create the partition for the backups
> on the new computer. There are 232 GB free on each of the two drives
> and I want to create a RAID 1 partition. I opened gparted in Etch, but
> it does not seem to be able to create a RAID. It can see existing RAID
> partitions, and it can create new regular partitions, but there is no
> way to tell it to create the new partition for a RAID. I searched in
> Synaptic on "raid" but nothing showed up that said it could create a
> RAID partition. I could boot to the install DVD and use its partition
> tool, but is there some other tool in Etch that will create a RAID
> partition on unused space?


Don't use RAID here.  Search the mailing list archives, or ask on the
list.

[1] http://www.debian-multimedia.org/faq.html

-- 
Michael M.  ++  Portland, OR  ++  USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson





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