Like most RedHat users, I'm looking to switch to another distribution.
In the past I have overlooked debian because it is extremely difficult
to download and install, even for an expert.

It seems things havn't changed, but now I'm motivated to make some
effort. I want to use unstable (sid), it seems to be the release that
competes closest with the old Redhat releases in terms of release
cycle and stability.

But when I see a document like http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/, it
seems to be deliberate that Debian is difficult to install. This page
documents where to get boot CDs to install both stable and testing,
but not unstable. And unstable is probably the distribution that most
people want!

Should I just give up now with Debian? I've always used RedHat becasue
they made it easy to install. I think that tells a lot about their
intentions towards their users. Using that metric, I've abandoned SuSE
before I even began (I still can't download the latest release, and
it's been out for a month).

It seems I'm left to choose between Slackware and Mandrake. But if it
is possible to get a boot CD for Debian unstable, and if there's an
way way to mirror the install repository for i386 only, I'd love to
try it.

It seems though that even if I get Debian working, the userbase is
always going to be limited to the poeple who are willing to go through
a serious effort to even find installation media.

You don't initially install 'unstable'. Get the system installed with
just the basics from stable, then you change your
'/etc/apt/sources.list' to point to an unstable archive like:
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main

Then you do a 'apt-get update;apt-get upgrade' and you're now running
unstable. Assuming you've got a connection to the internet before you
try this, its a simple operation. The more stuff you install while
you're running 'stable', the more complicated upgrading becomes, so
thats why I suggest just getting stable installed with the minimum
amount of stuff. I've done probably over 50 installs this way since 2000
and it generally works without a hitch.

-Don

Thomas Reat wrote:

In article <3c4289ad.0311101749.7ac34fbc@posting.google.com>, Thomas Reat wrote:
Debian is not nearly as difficult as you've been told.
Getting it installed is simply a matter of following some
pretty well-written instructions. The bigger problems are
likely to come up when you need to perform administrative
tasks like adding hardware, changing network configuration,
etc. - and there are no gui frontends to sheild you from
config files. Even there, though, search, read, ask
questins, and learn, and you'll be an expert before you
know it.

A couple of warnings about Debian unstable, though. First,
it's called "unstable" for a reason. Second, Debian's
official stance is that they are not comitting to provide
security updates. In reality, they may or may not issue
security updates, but even when they do they are not likely
to be timely.

Good luck!
-jefff

On 2003-11-11, no spam <no-spam@sonic.net> wrote:
This is a strange way to put it. Debian unstable is not a "release" in any
conventional sense. It is new every day. Bugs are constantly added and
fixed.

Debian is a large and hence rather unruly bunch of volunteers. It is a
little strange to think that they (as a group) can "commit" to anything.
In practice, however, security fixes generally go into unstable in a pretty
timely way. Perhaps you are thinking about the "testing" distribution:
there is no mechanism for forcing security fixes into it.

--
Paul Kimoto
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text. Any images,
hyperlinks, or the like shown here have been added without my consent,
and may be a violation of international copyright law.

In article <3c4289ad.0311101749.7ac34fbc@posting.google.com>, Thomas Reat
wrote:
Debian is not difficult to install even for new users. You just have to
know what hardware you have.

The release cycle of Debian is about two years. The release cycle of
Debian Unstable is forever: it is never released! The only release Debian
does is the Stable one. Unstable is so named because it is in constant
flux, new stuff is added almost every day and you don't really know which
days it will work and which days it breaks.

The only way to install Unstable is to install Stable and do an upgrade.

How often do you install a Linux distribution? To me, using and
administering the system is what counts. Debian in particular is something
you only install once and upgrade forever.

I think some people occasionally do make install disks for Testing and
Unstable, but I'd recommend the upgrade-from-stable route.

Uhhh... That's a pretty safe bet. People who can't find installation media
for a system will hardly use it

--
Juha Siltala
http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/people/jsiltala/

Thomas Reat <treat00@yahoo.com> wrote:
THINK!!!!


Install stable. Upgrade to testung. "Upgrade" to unstable.

No - unstable IS unstable. It is not a good idea. Using new stuff is
BAD. Stop following microsoftisms, as enshrined by redhat.

Peter

On 10 Nov 2003 17:49:03 -0800, treat00@yahoo.com (Thomas Reat) wrote:

I haven't found it to be so difficult. Red Hat does have a nicer
graphical interface, but Debian's not all that hard.

I disagree completely - unstable is probably closest Mandrake
Cookfire.

Traditionally, you couldn't get Debian CDs at all - for anything. As
already noted, you install stable and upgrade.

That should not be a reason for choosing one distro over another when
looking at servers. Things like stability, support resources, Oracle
certification, and others come to mind first.

I don't know why you'd abandon SUSE over their install: it's just as
easy.

As for the latest release, you won't be able to: company policy. Go
try SUSE 8.2 and don't worry about it!

If you want easy installs, forget about Slackware.

It's always been thus. Only recently has it changed at all.

They're not alone: OpenBSD doesn't have an ISO either.

I, for one, disagree with both OpenBSD and Debian projects: there
should be an ISO. But it's not up to me...

David Douthitt (david@douthitt.net)
UNIX System Administrator
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux
Linux+, LPIC-1

David Douthitt <ssrat@mailbag.com> wrote in message news:<jno2rvolcv2lhne1mrlgqsumd6f9nepe5f@4ax.com>. ..
When there's no material difference in other factors (because it's
largely the same software), ease of installation is important. And
when you're installing the OS on dozens or hundreds of machines, ease
of installation is critical.

A redhat install takes me a minute of effort to download, five minutes
of effort to set up kickstart, another two minutes for PXE. And this
is the one-time cost (per release per network). After that I can
install the OS with almost zero effort. Of course it doesn't always go
smoothly, but it -almost- always does.

Stability is proportional to how well-tested the software is. Ease of
installation helps stability becasue more people install it and report
bugs.

Support resources are proportional to the installed base. Sure, you
can buy support from Redhat, but they don't know the answer to even
simple questions. (Sometimes they're totally wrong, other times they
don't even answer). On complex questions, they just play typical
support games and never escalate the case to anyone competent (if
there even is someone competent in their support organization).

Redhat was always trivial to download. Debian is quite difficult. For
example, http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/ gives four install discs to
choose from for the recommended method of installing "stable". The
first links to a directory listing of files that can't be downloaded
(instead a message about how I can't download if I'm not on their
network). The second warns that "Debian 3 does not exist yet" on their
page (sounds dangerously out of date to me).

SuSE on the other hand is IMPOSSIBLE to download. This makes Debian
look positively easy.

I'd rather use a different distribution rather than install one I know
not to be recent. If it's a server for business purposes, I'd rather
the stability, yes. But then I'd like to use the same distribution
even if it's different versions, as with Redhat. Not that Redhat's
"Enterprise Linux" stuff is any more stable than the releases. (I ran
into numerous huge bugs that were fixed in current releases).

Well there's two kinds of easy. If it works smoothly (almost) every
time even though I have to answer some reasonable questions, that's
fine. Clever hardware detection makes the Redhat (or SuSE) installs
really nice (when it works, which is usually). But I don't mind
picking drivers off a menu. I wouldn't even mind being dropped into a
shell and told "please load appropriate modules, partition your disk,
mount the new empty structure on /newimage, create
/newimage/etc/{fstab,modules.conf} and exit the shell to continue the
install".

Not being able to download the distro is the kind of difficulty I
can't work around.

At earth time Wed, 12 Nov 2003 16:45:01 -0800, the following transmission
was received from the entity known as Thomas Reat:

If you go to:
http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/
you can get to various mirrors which hold all the isos for the full stable
install, which you can upgrade over the net to testing or unstable. If you
have a low bandwidth connection, you don't need to upgrade the whole
system - just the packages you actually need to be the latest versions.
(Any other packages they depend on will be upgraded automatically at the
same time) You only need the first CD to install a basic system.

http://people.debian.org/~dwhedon/boot-floppies/
looks like the one to go for if you want to do it this way. Page
last updated Aug 2002. bootbf2.4 has the 2.4 kernel, which you need if you
want ext3 filesystems. You can also do a net install from the standard
woody CD1 though.

If you want to install to a lot of identical machines, something like this
should work:

- use the net-install method to install to a reference machine, and get
this machine set up the way you want it, including upgrading to testing or
unstable if appropriate.
- use apt-move to turn the archive of packages you have downloaded while
installing to this machine into a valid debian ftp archive.
- export this to your local net with ftp or nfs. (maybe copy it to a
fileserver first)
- use dpkg --get-selections > packages.list on this
machine to save a list of installed packages. Copy to a floppy or usb
flash disk. - then on each other machine, you should be able to install
the base system over the local net using the bootdisk, then install all
the packages you want using:
- # dselect update
# dpkg --set-selections < packages.list # apt-get -u dselect-upgrade

The only problem with this method is that you would still have to
individually answer all the config questions for the packages that require
them on each of the 'clone' machines. There might be ways round this, as
debian now has a standard config system which saves all the answers you
give when installing to a database, which could possibly be copied somehow.

see the debian reference manual
(http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/de...erence.en.html)
for loads more hints and tips.

Someone with more experience than me might be able to give you pointers on
how to set up a fully automated system where all the 'clone' machines
update themselves automatically to copy the reference machine when you
make changes to it.

andy.

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At earth time Thu, 13 Nov 2003 02:10:54 +0000, the following transmission
was received from the entity known as Andy Baxter:

P.S. might be worth looking through the description of the following
commands on the debian website:

all the apt-* commands, which do various things with the package
management system.

dpkg, which is the low level package installer.

debconf - the configuration database manager.

dpkg-reconfigure - reconfigure a package.

configure-debian - a simple front-end to debconf and dpkg-reconfigure

autoinstall - automatically install a standard system to a number of
machines.

dpsycho - create custom 'configuration' packages which will set up
machines a given way when installed on them.

synaptic - nice GUI front end to apt.

I reckon that you'll find that debian does have most of the tools to do
what you want - it's just you may have to dig around a bit to get things
set up right for you, as is often the way with debian.

andy.

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On 12 Nov 2003 16:45:01 -0800, treat00@yahoo.com (Thomas Reat) wrote:

Those are two entirely different matters. First is "installation" -
do I get pretty pictures and progress bars, or do I have to use fdisk?

Second is automated installation. First, Red Hat, SUSE, and Debian
all have automatic installation programs.

SUSE offers that, as does Debian.

Installers should not be beta testers.

Please! Those are unofficial CDROMs designed for network installation
of Debian. Try this link: http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/ and this
one: http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=4

They're all right there.

Not entirely. Granted there's no CDROM for the i386, but there is for
Sparc, as well as an FTP install CDROM for i386:
http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=2

So which is it? Red Hat Enterprise Linux by design uses OLD software
- 2.1AS was based on Red Hat 7.2. How old is that?

Plus SUSE 8.2 is much more recent than Red Hat AS 2.1 because of the
release cycles involved.

Then that's almost no limitation at all. I've done installs of SUSE,
Red Hat, Debian, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, and HP-UX - and they ALL
fall into that category.

http://www.linuxiso.org

David Douthitt (david@douthitt.net)
UNIX System Administrator
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux
Linux+, LPIC-1

Thomas> Like most RedHat users, I'm looking to switch to another
Thomas> distribution. In the past I have overlooked debian
Thomas> because it is extremely difficult to download and install,
Thomas> even for an expert.

Me too. I did want to switch 2 years ago, but had used insufficient
time as an excuse. But finally, I did it a few months ago. Never
looked back.


Thomas> But when I see a document like
Thomas> http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/, it seems to be
Thomas> deliberate that Debian is difficult to install.

I switched to Debian on this laptop without using any CD. It doesn't
have a CD drive at all. And I used NO floppies, either. All that's
important is an ethernet connection to the Net.

If you have enough disk space for installing an extra distro (I
didn't, so I had to play some game with arranging disk space here and
there) and you have a fast enough Internet connection, then things are
easy. Start with debootstrap. Once you have a base Debian system
running, everything else is just "apt-get install <whatever ...>". No
CD's needed. BTW, if you had enough clues to have a separate /home
partition on your RH system, you could carry it over to the new
system.



Thomas> This page documents where to get boot CDs to install both
Thomas> stable and testing, but not unstable.

Start with a stable base installation. Then start to "apt-get -t
unstable install <whatever ...>".


Thomas> And unstable is probably the distribution that most people
Thomas> want!

No. Most people use Linux for its stability.

I myself am still refraining from any 'unstable' package, although my
system is a stable+testing mix.



Thomas> Should I just give up now with Debian? I've always used
Thomas> RedHat becasue they made it easy to install.

Easy to install? That's only superficial. Maintenance is hard with
RH: You have to check their update lists (esp. "security") and
download and apply the updates manually, unless you spare the money to
subscribe to their "up2date" service. I've even written Perl scripts
to read the lists and download new update RPMs automagically. But I
still find it a nuisance.

Debian, by contrast, is very easy to maintain. "apt-get update;
apt-get upgrade" and it'll download and install updated packages.
Installing software is as easy, too: "apt-get install <software1
software2 ...>". Guess what: it resolves the dependancies for you and
automagically downloads and installs additional packages (mostly
various libraries) for you. No need to go around to look for dozens
of lib*.rpm and download and install manually.


Thomas> I think that tells a lot about their intentions towards
Thomas> their users.

Yeah. Towards users who don't maintain their systems, perhaps.


Thomas> Using that metric, I've abandoned SuSE before I even began
Thomas> (I still can't download the latest release, and it's been
Thomas> out for a month).

Why? I use SuSE at work. It's quite good. It has automatic online
upgrade -- a big win over RH.


Thomas> It seems I'm left to choose between Slackware and
Thomas> Mandrake.

If you can handle Slackware, I can't see why you can't handle Debian.
IMO, Slackware requires even more "expert" knowledge to install.


Thomas> But if it is possible to get a boot CD for Debian
Thomas> unstable, and if there's an way way to mirror the install
Thomas> repository for i386 only, I'd love to try it.

Install a stable system, and then upgrade only the required softwares
to 'unstable'.


Thomas> It seems though that even if I get Debian working, the
Thomas> userbase is always going to be limited to the poeple who
Thomas> are willing to go through a serious effort to even find
Thomas> installation media.

No. I didn't need any installation media at all. Since you're
already using a Linux system, why not try debootstrap?


--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

David> It's always been thus. Only recently has it changed at
David> all.

David> They're not alone: OpenBSD doesn't have an ISO either.

David> I, for one, disagree with both OpenBSD and Debian projects:
David> there should be an ISO. But it's not up to me...

But I've burned a Debian ISO (only CD1) before. Get 'jigdo' to
assemble the ISO image. It's quite easy and fast.



--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Thomas> When there's no material difference in other factors
Thomas> (because it's largely the same software), ease of
Thomas> installation is important. And when you're installing the
Thomas> OS on dozens or hundreds of machines, ease of installation
Thomas> is critical.

As I said in another post, ease of *maintenance* is much more
important than easy of installation, esp. whey you're talking about
dozens or hundreds of machines. What's easier than "apt-get update;
apt-get upgrade"? You can even do it as a cron job on each machine!

Moreover, if you need to add or remove some software packages, it's
just "apt-get install new_stuff -old_stuff". What can be easier? You
can easily write a shell script based on this command, and cause this
apt-get command to be run on those hundreds of machines via SSH.
What's easier?


Thomas> A redhat install takes me a minute of effort to download,
Thomas> five minutes of effort to set up kickstart, another two
Thomas> minutes for PXE. And this is the one-time cost (per
Thomas> release per network).

So, you never maintain your installations and never apply security
updates?


Thomas> Stability is proportional to how well-tested the software
Thomas> is. Ease of installation helps stability becasue more
Thomas> people install it and report bugs.

Yeah. That's why Debian stable is so stable.


Thomas> Redhat was always trivial to download. Debian is quite
Thomas> difficult. For example, http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
Thomas> gives four install discs to choose from for the
Thomas> recommended method of installing "stable".

I see. Choice is a big complication to you. You prefer dictatorship?


Thomas> The first links to a directory listing of files that can't
Thomas> be downloaded (instead a message about how I can't
Thomas> download if I'm not on their network). The second warns
Thomas> that "Debian 3 does not exist yet" on their page (sounds
Thomas> dangerously out of date to me).

Get 'jigdo' and use it to create your own Debian ISO images. It's
easy. But you HAVE TO read and follow instructions.


Thomas> SuSE on the other hand is IMPOSSIBLE to download. This
Thomas> makes Debian look positively easy.

The Debian ISOs and packages are not only downloadable, but also
downloadable from lots of mirrors.


Thomas> I'd rather use a different distribution rather than
Thomas> install one I know not to be recent.

My Debian has the package "kernel-image-2.6.0-test4-3" on it. Not
recent?



Thomas> Well there's two kinds of easy. If it works smoothly
Thomas> (almost) every time even though I have to answer some
Thomas> reasonable questions, that's fine.

Debian is like that. What makes you think otherwise?


Thomas> Not being able to download the distro is the kind of
Thomas> difficulty I can't work around.

Not knowing what you're doing is the reason you can't do it.

Believe us. Do a base install of "stable". And then add the unstable
sources to /etc/apt/sources.list. And then update and upgrade. It's
that easy.


--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

On 15 Nov 2003 17:46:53 +0100, LEE Sau Dan
<danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

Not really.

Not that hard. I used to mirror (locally) the updates directory from
the appropriate Red Hat version and update from that periodically.
However, it's even easier that that.... (read on)

apt-get does that just fine on my Red Hat distros too.

But it doesn't come with apt-get.

David Douthitt (david@douthitt.net)
UNIX System Administrator
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux
Linux+, LPIC-1

On 15 Nov 2003 18:05:12 +0100, LEE Sau Dan
<danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

I do it on my Red Hat servers all the time.

Red Hat does this too.

I never liked having to get some special program just to get things
done. Does it run under Win95? MSDOS? FreeDOS? Linux? BSD?

I prefer to just download a floppy image and install over the net or
to download a CDROM image and boot.

They weren't always - this is only a recent development.

And this on a STABLE distribution?

David Douthitt (david@douthitt.net)
UNIX System Administrator
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux
Linux+, LPIC-1

David> But it doesn't come with apt-get.

Why care about the difference? As long as yast2 can automatically
solve the package dependencies and download them and install them for
me automatically, I don't care that it's not apt-get.


--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

David> I never liked having to get some special program just to
David> get things done.

Even when it does it more efficiently and cleverly?


David> Does it run under Win95? MSDOS? FreeDOS?

I don't know. I don't care about those OSes any more. Why don't you
Google and check?


David> Linux? BSD?

Linux? Sure. That's how I did it in August. BSD: Likely.



David> And this on a STABLE distribution?

What's wrong with installing testing packages on a (predominantly)
stable distribution? It's not a 24*7*52 production system, anyway.
Just my laptop.


--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee