Debian NEW and BYHAND Packages

A post by Goswin von Brederlow on debian-curiosa mentions a good way of tracking new packages that make GNU/debian.

From: Goswin von Brederlow To: debian-curiosa_at_lists.debian.org Subject: Nothing NEW in Debian Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:45:25 +0200

Hi,
a momentous occasion. Never seen before in a million years (or 5 or so):
There is nothing NEW¹ in Debian. :)
MfG Goswin

¹ http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html

Perhaps a RSS/XML feed of “Debian NEW and BYHAND Packages”: http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html summary page would be a good idea.

PS: Perhaps I don't need to mention that the post was a rant on Debian state of affairs.

Running automated package updates with Cron

LinuxLove.org's recent post about automatically running apt-get upgrades daily with cron using a simple bash script can be easily done using Cron-Apt package itself.

Please do note that such automated package upgrades in apt based distro's is a very bad idea. Joe had rewritten a detailed account about the problems and security issues involved in Debian-Administration.org few years back.

By default, cron-apt will only download updates -- it will not install them. I know other packages for other distributions like up2date will automatically install the updates for you, but I've learned to like this and that in the long run, automatically installing updates is a Bad Thing. Why? Well when I was experimenting with auto-installs, I ran into problems:

• Even though I told apt to say Yes to everything, it still prompted me for input on config file conflicts (was I doing something wrong?). This caused the script to hang indefinitely in the background until it was killed.
• Auto-accepting configuration changes can ruin your day. With Debian, it's fairly easy to back out of a change and hopefully you have a backup copy of the config file, but that's not the point. Good System Administration means you should never be in that position in the first place. "OK, what if I just deny all configuration changes and leave my copy?", you ask. Well, what if the upgraded program uses new syntax in its config file. Your program is now broke and you're in the exact opposite position as you were with auto-accepting.
• Just as you should always review configuration file changes, always review what packages are being installed. If you know that installing that new version of Samba will mean some extra work in other places, don't install it yet.

Bottom line: Yes, it can be very tedious to manually review each update batch -- especially if you have several servers -- but that is part of your job when you are running a server. Deal with it!

Indian Debian Repositories (sources.list for sid)

Here is a very basic Apt sources.list configuration example for my GNU/Debian Sid/Unstable machine. The Indian IITM Debian Mirror is the first entry the sources.list file given below, I'll call it my primary repository. It is geographically close (just few hundred miles from here) and only few network hops away.

The Indian GNU/ Debian Linux Mirror is not always fresh so I use another second repository entry which I keep changing according to the Debian Mirror Checker results.

• http://mirror.debian.org/status.html
• http://www.de.debian.org/dmc/today/

The idea behind having a primary and secondary repository is for added redundancy and also I'll get the latest uploaded version of the (certain) package from the fresh secondary repository. Thus limiting much of the bandwidth traffic to my primary Debian mirror.

The last entry is Christan Marillat's Debian-Multimedia.org which provides the mplayer and its non-free codec's

############################################ ## GNU/Debian Linux Sid (Primary Repo) ## ############################################ deb http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/debian sid main non-free contrib deb-src http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/debian sid main non-free contrib ############################################ ## GNU/Debian Linux Sid (Secondary Repo) ## ############################################ deb http://debian.yorku.ca/debian unstable main non-free contrib deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/debian unstable main non-free contrib ####################################################### ## Debian-Multimedia.org (Christan Marillat's Repo) ## ####################################################### deb http://mirror.home-dn.net/debian-multimedia unstable main

Installing Flash Plugin in Debian

Lets install Shockwave Flash plugin from Macromedia Adobe on Debian. We will be using the flashplugin-nonfree package from Debian Non-free. This package will install plugin for any Netscape or Mozilla based browsers like Mozilla, Mozilla-Firefox, Firefox, Iceweasel, and Iceape, along with few others like Galeon and Epiphany. Before we begin make sure you have non-free repository added in your apt-get sources.list file. Here is example from my sources.list file. deb http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/debian sid main non-free contrib Alright update the apt list and install flashplugin-nonfree package. $ apt-get update ... $ apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Suggested packages: konqueror-nsplugins x-ttcidfont-conf msttcorefonts ttf-xfree86-nonfree xfs The following NEW packages will be installed: flashplugin-nonfree 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 15.5kB of archives. After unpacking 143kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://ftp.iitm.ac.in sid/contrib flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.48.0.2 [15.5kB] Fetched 15.5kB in 8s (1906B/s) At this moment the install asks you if you have downloaded the latest flashplayer tar.gz file and prompts your for the path. Lets downloaded the latest flashplayer9 update from another console. $ cd /tmp $ wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer9_update/flashplayer9_install_linux_082207.tar.gz Once the file is downloaded, give the path as /tmp/ in the text box prompt of the installer. And the install continues.... Preconfiguring packages ... Selecting previously deselected package flashplugin-nonfree. (Reading database ... 72707 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking flashplugin-nonfree (from .../flashplugin-nonfree_9.0.48.0.2_i386.deb) ... Setting up flashplugin-nonfree (9.0.48.0.2) ... Installing from local file /tmp//install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz Flash Plugin installed. Cool,Lets check if the plugin installed. You need restart your browser if you it is already running and point your browser to about:plugins If you see something like this then the plugins is install and working. Shockwave Flash File name: libflashplayer.so Shockwave Flash 9.0 r48 MIME Type Description Suffixes Enabled application/x-shockwave-flash Shockwave Flash swf Yes application/futuresplash FutureSplash Player spl Yes