[oclug] Debian 2.1 and apache

[Brad Barnett]

On 16 Oct 2002 07:34:06 -0400
Milan Budimirovic <milan.budimirovic at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> On Wed, 2002-10-16 at 03:23, B McKee wrote:
> > Good Morning All
> > 	I decided I want to start running my own webserver.  Strictly
> > 	personal goof 
> > around learning stuff.  I'm hoping for 10 hits a month.  My budget for
> > this project is less than $50  :-)
> > I managed to assemble a 486dx66 w/ 20meg of ram and a 2 gig drive.
> > 	I have seen quite a few comments that Debian was a good choice for
> > 	older 
> > equiptment and I had a CD from the back of a book I'd bought.  The
> > install went pretty well (after I figured out what the heck dselect
> > was telling me).  I tried doing a few simple things and was impressed
> > with how 'snappy' it seemed.  Then I realized - it's running a 2.0
> > kernel!
> > 	So, (finally,) here is my question.  The only thing I'm going to
> > 	use this 
> > box for is Apache with ssh for remote administration.  Maybe someday
> > it will be a mail server too, but not anytime soon.  While I expect I
> > will have to update both apache and ssh for security reasons, and
> > install a firewall - is there any good reason to update the rest of
> > the system? B McKee
> 
> In a word, YES. If your machine is visible over the Net it is a **very**
> good idea to be running code that is still being maintained. Debian 2.1
> is about 5 years old now, and I don't believe anyone is making available
> any security patches for it. Apart from the existing security holes,
> there won't be a lot you can do if a new one pops up next week and
> there's no patch for it.
> 
> Get the latest stable version, 3.0. It doesn't cost you anything, and
> will save you a lot of pain down the road.
> 


I'll add to this wise advice by saying a few things.  B McKee, you're
lucky in one respect.  You can upgrade to the newest version of debian
without downloading another CD.  Simply edit your /etc/apt/sources.list
file, and change the file to something like :

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian woody main contrib non-free
deb http://non-US.debian.org/debian-non-US woody/non-US main contrib
non-free
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian woody main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org woody updates/main

(note that each deb line should not wrap)

Then simply do an 'apt-get update' and then an 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.

This will see you upgraded to the newest version of debian!  Afterwords,
you will probably want to install the newest 2.2 kernel (why use 2.4?). 
You can apt-get install that too ;)

Good luck!