[LUNI] Testers wanted: apt on Red Hat Linux 7.1

[Martin Maney]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 04:29:06AM -0600, Simon L. Epsteyn wrote:
> Well, I couldn't do a network install with one floppy,

Yeah, the size of the full boot floppy set is unreasonable.  It's been
growing since Debian began, approximately, and needs to be completely
rethought.  Which is what they're doing, but it won't be here for Woody's
release.

> I couldn't automate the install, that alone is worth Red Hat.

<nod> If you're installing a boatload of identically-configured machines,
this would be an important consideration.

> I can't recall other specifics right now, but I got an unfinished feeling
> with things, for example some man pages were in /usr/doc/man others
> /usr/share/doc/man, for no reason, which not only broke makewhatis (man -k
> didn't result in full search) but was just annoying, reminded me of
> Mandrake.

The multiple locations would be due to transitioning from the older file
system standard to the new.  I haven't noticed that the intermediate state
breaks anything, but I'm sure there are some dark corners.  IME apropos
works fine, although there is something odd about when the database gets
updated after new packages (that include man pages) are installed sometimes.
I think it sometimes doesn't happen until you execute a normal man command
(ie, not a search).  At least I think this was happening in potato - I
haven't encountered it very often.

> Also, debian doesn't actually have real releases, sure they tag things 
> release sometimes, but can one install original Potato right now?  Other 

Why would you want NOT to install the security fixes that have come out in
the last year?  For that matter, why would you not have updated the
installed base with them long since?

> then saving stuff, no.  Say you are running "enterprise", and you want to 
> update your old but stable release.  With Red Hat, I'll grab my wu-ftpd for 
> Red Hat 6.2 and go on, with Debian?  Sure there is source package, but then 
> build deps have evolved and I have no interest in upgrading libfoo and 
> libbar and tool baz.

I really don't see what you're asking for here other than to be able to get,
now, the old, buggy versions of things.  If you want to do a new install of,
say, bo, it's still available on the archive site.  Even the old, original,
as-released, buggy versions *may* be available with the new "package pools"
setup - Woody is the first release that's using that mechanism on the
servers.

> As soon as I find the floppy drive for my Vaio, I'll install potato or woody 
> and try to note things.
> 
> BTW, what do you have against Red Hat? (no compiler is not broken)

At this point in time, it's been some years, so most of it is secondhand.  I
didn't like the lack of a package manager - the user-interface half of it,
as I discussed last time.  From all I hear, installing an RPM that needs
some other packages that you don't happen to have on board already is still
a very manual process.  There seems to be a general tendency for things that
I couldn't live without to exist only as "contrib" packages (which has a
very different meaning for Red Hat - those are the ones that come from Joe
Random Hacker and have no support or QA, yes?).  My last experience was
helping a friend get ssh installed - it wasn't in the official release,
which was shocking.  (this was recent enough that Debian had had OpenSSH in
main for long enough that I couldn't imagine living without it, but I'm just
not sure when exactly it was)


Looking back at all this as the coffee begins to infiltrate my brain, it
looks like you appreciate (because you require) the features that Red Hat
has that support large-scale rollouts of essentially identical machines. 
For me, such things are of academic interest only (although that might
change later): although I have a lot of basic stuff beyond the standard
package sets, I can't say that I have ever set out to configure two machines
exactly the same.  If I did I guess I'd just duplicate the disk image and
then make the few machine-specific changes (machine name, IP address if
static) by hand.  If I had a roomfull... well, I haven't gotten around to
looking at parted at all closely, but I think it might help.

-- 
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh'er va ivbyngvba bs
gur Qvtvgny Zvyyraavhz Pbclevtug Npg.  -- anon.