New user Q: Best way to stay up to date on "testing"?

From: JW (jw_at_mailsw.com)
Date: 10/08/04

  • Next message: Paul Johnson: "Re: "apt-get dist-upgrade" Question:" 
    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 15:18:02 -0500

    Hello,

    Sorry to bother everyone with newbie questions, but I'm struggling to
    understand the entire Debian environment and need a little advise.

    I have been using SuSE for a long time but recently my job has required me to
    start administrating a Debian server that was set up with 3.1/Sarge/Testing
    by the co (server is actually in another state, so I'm stuck with what the
    co-lo put on it. I like Debian and I'm sure with time I'll figure it all out,
    but in the short run I need a little help.

    We are planning on keeping the server for quite a long time, it will be used
    for part of a billing system (perl/web based).

    I was reading the security FAQ and am somewhat alarmed to find (if I
    understand correctly) that Testing is not actively supported by the security
    team. Youch. If I could put stable on it I would, but for the reasons stated
    above I can't.

    It seems to me that the best thing for me to do is keep all the installed
    software up to date. For one thing, new packages are more likely to contain
    security fixes (even if they aren't official security patches), and also, I'm
    hoping that some day in the future Sage will be declared stable and I'll be
    able to hop on the security train.

    I am wondering what the best way is to go about staying up to date. If I run
    apt-get -s upgrade I'm told that apt wants to upgrade about 15 packages, most
    of which seem to be related to X (we won't ever be using X on this server. it
    wasn't originally installed and I"d like to get rid of it but some other
    package I installed had a dependancy on some gtk thing that had one on X. Oh
    well).

    Could anyone confirm that "upgrade" is the right way to stay up to date. I'm
    not going to run it automatically, and I'll always do a test run first to
    make sure nothing disastrous is going to happen.

    Is running upgrade on a regular basis a bad idea for any reason?

    It just seems like I'll need to be as up to date as possible when Sarge is
    declared stable in order to make a smooth transition to Sarge/Stable. Correct
    me if I'm wrong. I've always found it better to update packages a little at a
    time rather than wait till there's dozens of updates to install.

    If anyone has advise on how to keep a Testing system secure, I'd really like
    to hear it.

    Thanks for your time,

            JW

    P.S. If anyone has a link to some favorite documentation on Debian package
    handling for newbies, please send it on. I've read a lot of man pages and
    docs on the web site, and I'll keep reading till I get it all. But the
    abundance of package handling tools and front ends is quite bewildering to
    someone who's used to RPM and only RPM. TIA. 

    -- 
----------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Wilson
Cedar Creek Software     http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com
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