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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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Securely wipe a headless remote linux server

I'm about to terminate my relationship with my hosting provider of many years, but I'd like to securely wipe the box before I do. This is a dedicated server running Debian on a single EXT3 drive and although I have root access, I can't boot…
notpeter
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DRBD terrible sync performance on 10GigE

I've set up a pair of identical servers with RAID arrays (8 cores, 16GB RAM, 12x2 TB RAID6), 3 10GigE interfaces, to host some highly available services. The systems are currently running Debian 7.9 Wheezy oldstable (because corosync/pacemaker are…
wazoox
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SSH sessions hang on shutdown/reboot

I have a server that runs Debian and sshd on it, and in case I need to reboot the server my SSH session hangs at client side until TCP timeout. I assume this is because when sshd is being terminated it does not explicitly close open SSH sessions to…
Vesper
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How to upgrade PHP 5.4 to PHP 5.6 on Debian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy)

I've added these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://packages.dotdeb.org wheezy-php56 all deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org wheezy-php56 all But still sudo apt-get update or sudo apt-get upgrade don't touch php. php --version is still PHP…
JasonGenX
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Install only dependencies of a given package in Debian or Ubuntu (apt)

Is there a better way to install only the required dependencies of a package, instead of installing it directly with apt-get (or any other frontend of dpkg) and then immediately removing it, leaving out its dependencies?
Vinícius Ferrão
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VirtualBox: issue with symlinks in shared folders

Some time ago there was a thread to exact the same problem: Can't create symlinks in virtualbox shared folders. Now it's closed (why?). So I start a new one, because I've got this issue now and cannot find a solution. Short issue description: By…
automatix
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How to version lock packages in Ubuntu?

On CentOS exists the yum versionlock option, where you can lock a package to a specific version, so it is never upgraded past that. I would like that puppet-server-2.7.19-1 puppet-2.7.19-1 stays on 2.7, and never upgraded to 3.0. Puppet Labs have…
Sandra
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Disable TCP-Offloading {completely, generically and easily}

I want to disable tcp-offloading (TOE) on my Debian servers. I would use something like: ethtool -K … I have some wishes, though: is it possible to integrate it cleanly into Debian? This reads: no rc.local, I would also like to avoid…
Michuelnik
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Is there a "standard" way to make daemon in Debian?

I need to create a daemon from the application in Debian. Is there any standard tool for this in Debian like "upstart" in Ubuntu? I need only start-stop commands, to start a program as a daemon with some options and a pid file and kill it with pid…
Kuroki Kaze
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Is it safe to run apt-get update every night?

Is it safe to run apt-get update -y through cron on a production server?
Miko
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~/.bashrc is NOT sourced on ssh 'command'

At the end of .bashrc I added: touch /tmp/bash_noninteractive_test Run: /usr/bin/ssh -v -C root@example.com 'ls' On the host (logged in interactively before): % ls -l /tmp/bash_noninteractive_test ls: cannot access /tmp/bash_noninteractive_test:…
LetMeSOThat4U
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Reprepro export could not find signing key

We have a private debian repository that was set up years ago by an earlier system admin. Packages were signed by the older key, 7610DDDE (which I had to revoke), as shown here for the root user on the repo server. # gpg…
Andy Dorman
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Can a different DNS server be used for subdomains?

I have a domain example.com, and subdomains a.example.com and b.example.com on a production server. I also have a development server dev.example.com, with subdomains a.dev.example.com and b.dev.example.com. Both of these servers are running their…
muncherelli
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nginx uLimit 'worker_connections exceed open file resource limit: 1024'

I keep getting this error in nginx/error.log and its driving me nuts: 8096 worker_connections exceed open file resource limit: 1024 I've tried everything I can think of and cant figure out what is limiting nginx here. Can you tell what am I…
Neel
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How can I install packages without starting their associated services?

As you're probably aware, by default when you install a package on a Debian or Ubuntu based system, if the package contains a service, that service will generally be enabled and started automatically when you install the package. This is a problem…
Michael Hampton
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