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Questions tagged [debian]

Debian is a popular and influential GNU/Linux distribution. Questions here should generally be about Debian Server.

Debian GNU/Linux its one of the oldest and more popular Linux distributions. The Debian project was started in 1993 by Ian Murdock (the name Debian is a junction of Debra + Ian, his girlfriend at the time). Debian strongest points are the portability, stability and commitment to the free software ideal.

The current Debian version (6.0, code named Squeeze) has more than 29.000 software packages available on nine platforms (including SPARC, ARM, PowerPC), and 2 platforms supporting the FreeBSD kernel (Debian GNU/kfreebsd on i386 and amd64). The Debian APT package management provides dependency management and strong update and upgrade capabilities.

Debian maintains normally 3 versions of its repositories: stable (the current release), testing (the next release), unstable (new packages and versions). After debian makes a new release, the previous stable release is maintained for one year, and is re-labed oldstable. Squeeze also included the backports repository where some software from the testing will be made available to the stable release, and updates (previously named volatile) to deal with software that evolves too fast. Debian also makes point releases with aggregated updates and updated tools, those keep the release name but update the version like Debian 6.1 for example.

Debian has a Social Contract with its users and will only distribute on its main distribution software that is compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.Those two devices were created on the early days of the distribution and also are the basis for Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition.

The Debian project organization counts with the Debian Project Leader, the Debian Project Secretary and the Debian Developers. The developers are responsible for the releases, packaging software, managing the FTPs, security and so on. Each Project Leader is elected for a period of one year and any Developer can be a candidate.

Ubuntu Linux uses Debian as its base, as well as other well known distributions like Maemo, Mint, Knoppix and several others. The Wikipedia article has also more details about the distribution, as well as Debian's official site.

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Docker: failed to add the pair interfaces (operation not supported)

After installing Docker, I am getting an error when I try to run the Hello World example: Error response from daemon: Cannot start container 4145d0fccd96b904e4ab4413735f1129b8765429bad5be71dc8d5f4c0760666d: failed to create endpoint high_saha on…
piero-la-lune
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Run a shell script as a different user

What's a good way of running a shell script as a different user. I'm using Debian etch, and I know which user I want to impersonate. If I was doing it manually, I would do: su postgres ./backup_db.sh /tmp/test exit Since I want to automate the…
Wadih M.
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The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY

My environment: # uname -a Linux app11 4.9.0-5-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.65-3+deb9u2 (2018-01-04) x86_64 GNU/Linux # # cat /etc/*release PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)" NAME="Debian GNU/Linux" VERSION_ID="9" VERSION="9…
alexus
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How do I force Linux to reacquire a new IP address from the DHCP server?

The environment is Debian, although the answer will apply to all distributions.
GeneQ
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What's the difference between apt-get and aptitude?

I don't get why there are two different programs in a minimal install to install software. Don't they do the same thing? Is there a big difference? I have read everywhere to use aptitude over apt-get but I still don't know the difference
Thomaschaaf
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Given a debian source package - How do I install the build-deps?

I have a debian (well technically ubuntu) source package, i.e. the .dsc, the .tar.gz, etc., I want to build this. The dpkg-buildpackage fails, since I don't have all the build dependencies. Normally I'd use apt-get build-dep, but this package isn't…
Amandasaurus
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How much SWAP space on a 2-4GB system?

How should I decide what size to make my swap on a new Linux machine (Debian) with 2-4 GB of RAM? Do I really need swap space?
C. Ross
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HAProxy graceful reload with zero packet loss

I'm running an HAProxy load balancing server to balance load to multiple Apache servers. I need to reload HAProxy at any given time in order to change the load balancing algorithm. This all works fine, except for the fact that I have to reload the…
Conor Taylor
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100% non-interactive Debian dist-upgrade

Is there a way to do an apt-get dist-upgrade in Debian that not only automatically answers "yes" to all questions asked, but also uses reasonable defaults as answers to questions that are sophisticated enough to require various interactive dialog…
Alex Balashov
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How do you set a locale non-interactively on Debian/Ubuntu?

Usually, I run aptitude -y install locales then dpkg-reconfigure locales to set up locale. Now I want to put it into a shell script, how can I reliably do the following, automatically / non-interactively? Choose en_US.UTF-8 and set it as system…
kenn
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Slow ssh login - Activation of org.freedesktop.login1 timed out

On one of my servers I've noticed really delay on SSH logins. Connecting using the ssh -vvv options the delay occurs at debug1: Entering interactive session. extract of connection: debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey). Authenticated to…
Alasdair
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Do some debian builds not have lsb_release?

A .deb package I am releasing expects that it can call lsb_release. One customer using Debian 6.0.5 indicated that the lsb_release command (even in the terminal) produces a command not found error. Is this standard or is there something wrong with…
UsAaR33
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How can I prevent cron from filling up my syslog?

I have a script which needs to be executed each minute. The problem is that cron is logging to /var/log/syslog each time it executes. I end up seeing something like this repeated over and over in /var/log/syslog: Jun 25 00:56:01 myhostname…
user7321
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What exactly will --delete-excluded do for rsync?

I use rsync with great pleasure for backing up my servers, although I do have a question about the --delete-excluded parameter. /usr/bin/rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh root@server01:/etc…
ujjain
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Can dpkg verify files from an installed package?

With rpm -qV openssh-server I will get a list of files that have changed compared to default. ~$ rpm -qV openssh-server S.?....T. c /etc/ssh/sshd_config ~$ Can dpkg on Ubuntu do the same?
Sandra
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