Just a few days after the eighth update of etch (4.0r8), the Debian project announced the first update of lenny. Opposed to the etch updates, this receives a minor numbering in the version 5.0.1 and also updates the /etc/debian_version file with this information; even if this is a simple change, I like it a lot as it will make it much easier to identify what update level a machine is running (just like redhat world had forever in /etc/redhat-release ). Besides this cosmetic change, most of the updates were already on security.debian.org; still there is a kernel update (minor version update of course) that fixes some openvz, nfs bugs (see debian kernel changelog for full details) and because of this also an updated debian-installer.

“The Debian project is pleased to announce the first update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (codename lenny). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems.

Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away 5.0 CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated.

Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won’t have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update.”

Release Announcement: http://debian.org/News/2009/20090411

Here is an interesting interview with Steve McIntyre, the current leader @ debian.org where he talks about his work as the DPL and Debian future in general. By the way, Steve is standing for re-election this year… we will see how this turns out after this year vote…

http://www.h-online.com/open/Interview-Steve-McIntyre-of-Debian–/features/112783

Debian Lenny installer brings in several improvements over the old stable Etch version, but for us this has been a big disappointment. Basically as I mentioned in an older post “bnx2 missing from stock Debian 2.6.24 etchnhalf kernel“, starting with kernel 2.6.24, the debian team removed the bnx2 kernel module out of the kernel due to license restrictions placed on the firmware. I am a long time debian fan and I can fully understand the reason why they have done that, but still, if you have several hundred servers that use the Broadcom NetXtreme II NIC (that uses the bnx2 module) then you have a problem. This post is intended to show how we solved this problem and hopefully help others in the same situation.

As I mentioned we have many Dell PE1950 and PE2950 servers and we deploy all new servers using PXE boot install and use preseeding to setup basic configurations (custom partitions, apt mirrors, etc.). This worked fine for some years now with debian Etch; let’s see what happens with lenny installer: after the initial pxe boot, the installation halts with this error:
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Alexander Wirt announced that the lenny-backports suite is ready for uploads:
“I’m proud to announce the start of the lenny-backports distribution. All  contributors are now asked to provide new backports also for lenny-backports. But that does not mean etch-backports is dead, we will continue support for etch-backports as long as there is security support for oldstable (aka etch).”

etch-backports will still be supported for as long as there is security support for debian etch (now oldstable). People using etch-backports should probably upgrade to lenny anyway, and stop using the backports as this can now bring their system into an unstable state and break a clean upgrade path to lenny, if using potential newer packages than then one in lenny at this time.

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Yesterday, 14 February 2009, the Debian Project announced the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed “Lenny“). This comes after almost 2 years (22 months) from the previous stable release, “Etch” that was launched on 8 April 2007.

“This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6, MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl 5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11, and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).”

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If you, or your company would be interested in sponsoring the debian project here is your chance:

“The Debian project is looking for sponsors for two new official services: snapshot and data archives. Both services utilize large amounts of data and therefore require a capable machine with a large disk array that provides 10 TB of disk space to start, with the ability to be easily extended. We’d like interested sponsors to contact hardware-donations@debian.org.”

For full details: http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090208

Debian Lenny’s release is getting closer and closer and many people will want to upgrade their Etch servers to Lenny, maybe even before Lenny is declared stable (at RC1 at this time). Even people that don’t want to upgrade to lenny might find some useful information in this post .
One of the greatest advantages of debian over other linux distributions is that we can upgrade our systems live from one version to another (hopefully with minimal damage or impact to the running system), while other distros like rhel will not recommend their users to ever do this but to do a full new installation and migrate over their user data afterwards. Obviously it is a great advantage to be able to perform a live upgrade from one version to the other, and from my experience this has not caused problems, but even so, if this is a production server or just a system you care for and it is not for testing, I would start by making a backup of the system and be prepared in case it will no longer work after this. Just in case… Also you should start by reading the release notes of the new version and look for any incompatibilities (hardware or software) or changed things that could affect your particular setup. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a quick post to show how you can rebuild a debian package and skip some steps, like “make test” for example in the upstream package, by passing some build options. More and more debian packages are now supporting the nodocs, nocheck/notest build options. You might want this if you are repeatedly building the package and want to skip some parts and make it faster, or maybe some step is failing while running the tests and that is something acceptable and known. In this case you can build the package as usual and export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck.

For example rebuilding the mysql package takes quite a long time, and to skip the package run tests we will do something like:
dpkg-source -x mysql-dfsg-5.0_5.0.67-1.dsc
cd mysql-dfsg-5.0-5.0.67/
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck debuild -us -uc

Note: not all packages implement this option and you might want to look in the rules file and see if this is defined or not.

The Debian project announced yesterday that it has renamed the former “Custom Debian Distribution” concept (under which Debian projects such as Debian Edu, Debian Jr, Debian Med, Debian GIS and Debian Science were collectively known) to the catchier name “Debian Pure Blends.”

The Custom Debian Distribution/Debian Pure Blends concept is similar to what Fedora calls “Spins“. Essentially the releases under the Debian Pure Blend heading are Debian at their core (compatible with Debian base packages for updating) but configured to support a particular target group out-of-the-box, like:

• Debian Edu: a Blend aimed at schools
• Debian Junior: For children
• Debian Med: Medical
• Debian Science: Debian for different sciences

For a detailed explanations about Debian Pure Blends, check out the Debian wiki page: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends

This post will show how to setup an auto-reply message using vacation on a debian etch server running postfix. This should work in the same way using other email servers, but this was tested with postfix. I’ll assume that you have postfix already running properly on the server. The first step is to install the vacation package. Since vacation is available in etch we can install it just by running:
aptitude install vacation
and this will install vacation version 3.3.0 on the system

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