[oclug] General Debian questions from a Redhat guy.

[Michael P. Soulier]

On 11/08/02 Richard Wayne did speaketh:

> 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!

    That and their policies make one hell of a solid distribution. 

> 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)

    I'm not sure there is one. I manage the symlinks myself. I've only
occasionally wanted something more.

> 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)

    I use the manpages myself, but you might try the "debian-guide" package.

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

    rpm -V was always broken when I used RedHat, reporting broken packages
that weren't broken. As for installed packages, I usually do the following:

    dpkg -l "*" | grep ^ii | less

    or

    dpkg -l "*packagesubstring*" | grep ^ii 

    You can also fire up aptitude and look at installed packages that way, but
I prefer the above.

> 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.

    apt-get install apt-proxy

    Mike

-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at storm.ca>, GnuPG pub key: 5BC8BE08
"...the word HACK is used as a verb to indicate a massive amount
of nerd-like effort."  -Harley Hahn, A Student's Guide to Unix
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