[oclug] General Debian questions from a Redhat guy.

[Richard Wayne]

List,

I have just installed Woody using LordSutch.com's Mini-install CD and
apt-get. I have several years experience with Redhat distros but I've been
wanting to try Debian for sometime now and I finally got some spare
hardware. I was VERY impressed by apt-get, it may be worth switching to
Debian for that alone!

I do have a few questions though:

1) What non-gui tool is used for stopping/starting services and setting the
services that come up at boot time? (The Debian equiv of the 'chkconfig' and
'service' commands)

2) Where the best place to find Debian documentation? Especially Debian
administration tools? (debian.org does not seem to be up to Redhat when it
comes to documentation)

3) What tool is used as the equiv of the 'rpm -q' and 'rpm -V' commands?
(Querying and verifying installed packages)

4) Does the following exist: An "apt server proxy". I might in the future
install Woody on more machines here at home. If I do this I would like to
set up one machine that would actually get the packages I want to install
and then pass them around to the other machines. Basically I would like each
package to come through my ISP connection only once regardless of how many
machines I install the package on.

TIA
Richard Wayne