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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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How to set ulimit value permanently?

On Debian Wheezy, ulimit -a gives: open files (-n) 1024 I add this to /etc/security/limits.conf * hard nofile 64000 then reboot. And ulimit -a still gives a maximum number of open files of 1024.…
Icu
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automated linux deployment and config management at small scale - is it worth it?

I'm about to deploy ~25 servers running Debian. The machines will have different roles - web servers, Java appservers, proxies, MySQL boxes. The environment will probably not grow much in the future - maybe 2-5 more servers in next 2 years. I'll…
pQd
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Automatically keep current version of config files when apt-get install

I need to automatically install a package with its config file already present on the server. I'm looking for something like: apt-get install --yes --force-yes --keep-current-confs mysql-server Probably a dumb question but I can't find such an…
Falken
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Disable prompts while installing a Debian package

How can i disable totally the prompts that appear while installing a Debian package, i've used all the options that i've found but there are some packages that are still prompting. I'm using this command: apt-get -y --allow-unauthenticated…
victorgp
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iftop - how to generate text file with its output?

iftop is great tool to view almost live bandwidth usage distinguished by source-ip source-port destination-ip destination port. I'm using it to see which client's ip is using most bandwidth. Now I would like to store output somewhere. iftop uses…
mickula
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How to find files in a Debian system not installed or created by dpkg?

I've installed some things manually in the past and would like to weed out all related files. So, I need a way to automatically find all the files (in /usr, for example) that are not included in any of the packages currently installed on the Debian…
Karol
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Client on Debian 9 erroneously reports expired certificate for letsencrypt-issued domain

If I try to access our HTTPS server that has certbot-issued certificate from debian 9, I get the following error: # curl -v https://hu.dbpedia.org/ * Trying 195.111.2.82... * TCP_NODELAY set * Connected to hu.dbpedia.org (195.111.2.82) port…
P.Péter
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Setting the Timezone with an automated script

I'm writing scripts to automate setting up new slicehost installations. In a perfect world, after I started the script, it would just run, with no attention from me. I have succeeded, with one exception. How do I set the timezone, in a permanent…
Tom
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Can't change OpenDKIM socket in Debian stretch in /etc/default/opendkim

I am trying to set up opendkim on Debian stretch but I fail at changing the socket. I want to change the socket to /var/spool/postfix/opendkim/opendkim.sock so I can use it with postfix. I have added Socket…
lw1.at
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How to log the ip addresses trying to connect to a port?

Is it possible to log all IP addresses that trying to connect or connected to port "5901" in Linux Debian? How can i do that?
Gihan Lasita
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On Linux, how can I tell which process is sending Ethernet packets?

I'm running gkrellm which shows that some process on my Debian Linux system is writing approx 500KB/s to eth0. I'd like to find out which process it is. I know a little bit about netstat, but it shows a gazillion open TCP connections and I can't…
Norman Ramsey
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How to list all physically installed Network Cards (Debian)?

My "Dedicated Server" should have two NICs installed but I can only find one. My Question: What other commands and methods are available to test how many network cards are installed on my server lspci | grep Ethernet Are there any other commands /…
jens
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wheezy-updates on archive.debian.org returns 404 Not Found

I have an old test machine on Debian Wheezy that I can't really update right now. Debian Wheezy repositories were archived in February. So I want ahead, and updated my /etc/apt/sources.list from deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian wheezy main deb…
Zoddo
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dmesg time vs system time time isn't correct

I hope that here is somebody that can help me with this strange problem. I think that i know why it is happening but i don't know how to solve it. Maybe it is because the BIOS time isn't set correct or something like it. But i don't want to change…
g00gle
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How can I chroot ssh connections?

I would like to setup a chroot jail for most (not all) users logging in though SSH. I've heard it's possible with the latest versions of openssh, but I've not been able to find out how to do it. The How To's all talk of patching an old version, and…
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