Question for Debianers

[der.hans]

Am 16. Jul, 2002 schwätzte KevinO so:

> How much of a problem is this to do if you are living with very limited
> bandwidth? I would like to try out Deb on one of my boxes but the lack of
> bandwidth here gives me pause.

Start the download as you go to bed ( if you're on a modem this'll keep
telemarketers from calling :). If it's not done in the morning interrupt it.
The next night start the download again.

--download-only tells apt-get to fetch the debs, but not unpack them. Once
they're all on the system a normal dist-upgrade will take care of it. This
does require a lot of diskspace, but since it would anyway :) it's not a new
issue.

> I am getting a little tired of repairing Mandrake installs tho., even if I've
> gotten pretty good at it ;-)

Here's an opportunity to start repairing debian instead :). It works on PPC.
S/390 too if you have one sitting around...

> Any words of advice to make this transition a little smoother? How much
> trouble is it to update a box on-the-quick from source to fix a security
> problem if you aren't willing to wait for a deb package? (ie: apache and sshd
> as recent examples) Can this be done without messing up the package management
> or will I be forced to have a 'mixed system' like I have with Redhat and
> 'drake, or wait for the pkgs?

There is some work that still needs to be done, but I think debian has the
best mechanism. Building from debian source will allow you to have your own
debs, which then install with dpkg.

Debian was in the middle of completely changing out their security mechanism
when the apache and ssh stuff hit. They still had new packages out the next
day. They've now set up the autobuilders to give priority to the security
team, so a package maintainer updates the package to the security server and
packages for all 14 platforms get automagically built. Once it's been
tested, it's moved to an available pool and it's live.

ciao,

der.hans
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