[H-GEN] Debian install

Robert Brockway robert at zen.humbug.org.au
Tue Sep 16 19:09:40 EDT 1997


On Wed, 17 Sep 1997, Anthony Towns wrote:

> Anyway, since I was a little vague on what you needed to do to get a debian
> system from woe [1] to go. So I thought I'd post a clarification to the list
> for anyone in a similar situation.
> 
> Pointe, the first: debian does _not_ require sixty-five billion froppy disks 

So I hapilly discovered too :-)  I think the confusion arose because it
_used_ insist on an obnoxiously large number of disks.

> to install. If you've got a system with an IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive, it 
> doesn't even require _one_. The disks that you _can_ use are:

I used loaldin to boot it off zen's dos(games and pnp init) partition.
So no disks for me either.

> Pointe, the second: debian is remarkably automatic. Every time you finish 

I also found the new install pretty impressive.

> Pointe, the third: it's not just user friendly, it's downright chummy. And
> polite, too.  "Are you online now? If so, I'd like to refresh the newsgroup 
> descriptions.  May I?" (slnr) How many installation programs do you know 

I've always thought a little more respect was in order though.  That
should be "May I Sir?" :-)

> Pointe, the fourth: I _hate_ ae(1) and tiny-elvis(1). And when I say hate I
> don't just mean in that "don't you just hate it when the last thing you type
> before closing your telnet connection is 'su -c "nohup rm -rf / & killall 
> pppd"'", I mean in the sense that I'd rather be using pico(1).

I like pico (but I will use vi just as happily if I can).  I have had
terminals where vi was useless because of its use of the ESC key,  but
pico just went on grooving.
 
> Pointe, the fifth: pine(1) and pico(1) aren't on the CD. No, I don't understand

Its to do with the copyright on them.

> it either. Neither's PGP, due to export restrictions. Getting around both of
> those annoyances is achieved by the simple method of pointing dselect at the
> official ftp site (read: the Oz mirror of sunsite, for pine and similar), and
> progsoc.its.edu.au (the UofTas IIRC, for PGP and other "munitions").

Careful with PGP.  I know a guy who lost 11 fingers when he armed it one
day, and it went off in his hands.
:-)
 
> Pointe, the sixth: having been given the task to write a recursive grep program
> yesterday for CS228 (Systems Programming, ie C and Unix) I was less surprised
> than I might have been to find a package called rgrep. Guess what it does.

Don't tell me...I'll get it in a sec....hold on...
:-)

> Pointe, the seventh: the apache installation credits the authors of each of the
> support modules you can install. Another option for those of you seeking fame
> as well as fortune.

/usr/games/fortune?
 
> Pointe, the eighth: unlike the 1.2 installation, 1.3 asks you almost as soon
> as you log in to root for the first time whether you'd like shadow passwords
> setup. I was a little surprised to see the prompt [Y/n] instead of [Y/y].

I liked that too.  zen is happiliy running shadow again after a long
absense.  btw, xdm-shadow is provided for those of us who indulge in X
as soon as we login.
 
> Pointe, the ninth: qmail doesn't _seem_ to have a .deb file!?! I cannot 
> comprehend this. Hell, /etc/passwd even contains `qmail[dsrqlp]' by default!

I believe this is a copyright issue too.  There is no qmail rpm afaik
either.

> Still, I've got smail ("the route-addr hits...") installed instead of 
> sendmail like I used to, so that's presumably some sort of improvement
> security-wise, at least. 

The bugs are less well known :-)  Actually, I'm using smail too.
 
> Pointe, the b'th: what's the deal with man's behaviour with multiple matches
> under Linux? 'q' for next?!? If Solaris can get it right (:n, just like usual)
> why can't Linux?

Isn't that a result of the pager in use? which is definable using $PAGER
If it isn't a result of the pager, feel free to corrct me :-)

> Pointe, the d'th: there's a PPP setup program (dunc, dialup networking config)
> but it's somewhat dodgy. It's restricted to one phone number and one account, 

I'd just like to advertise my new (revamped) ppp script here :-)  It does
all the functions in 1 script.  Dialup, disconnect with 1 minute warning,
logging and stats on the logs, many numbers, multiple dialup a/cs, handles
all the odities of uq dialin (questnet banks, fast access banks).  It is
already on the uq modem bank FAQ on the web, and will be available from my
web page on zerlargal presently.

> Pointe, the e'th: it has "." in the default path! I'm disgusted. (and the
> default prompt is ugly too. "azure$ _" Ick. Both are fixed now, and fortune(1)
> is run at login, too.

A tip for some out there:
If you must have . in the path, put it at the end. ;-)
 
> Pointe, the f'th: don't try being too smart and having a small root drive and
> thinking you'll stick everything elsewhere. I set mine to 10MB, of which 8MB is
> now used. Thankfully I had 700MB left over, and /tmp's stuck on that. :)

My / is 20mb.  About 8mb filled.  I think having /tmp on a seperate
partition isn't too bad an idea - stop people filling / :-)
Cheers,
	-Robert

--Robert Brockway. Email: robert at zen.humbug.org.au, robert at icc.net.au
                          r.brockway at mailbox.uq.edu.au, robert at plugged.net.au
                   WWW:   http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
                   President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)

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