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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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Get contents from old .CSR

At one of my new customer sites, I have a SSL certificate which is about to expire. I've been notified by my provider of expiry. The previous admin was pretty detailed and I've located the .CSR which was used to request the about-to-expire…
David Mackintosh
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Is it possible to repartition a running Debian system without losing data

We need to resize the partition that is mounted to /var on a running machine. The only way to access it is via SSH, so live CD is not an option for us. Can we repartition the file system without losing any data? (The system is freshly installed so…
Igor Pavelek
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Jailkit not allowing SSH connections

I'm trying to set up jailkit on one of my servers which is running Debian 5. I created a new ssh user (bob) and a chroot directory for him (/var/www/bob). I gave the chroot the extshellplusnet and limitedshell options with the following…
dragonmantank
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What does the rm -rf recur do, when used in a cron?

I have a basic understanding of cron jobs, but I came across a tutorial today which recommends adding: 30 3 * * * wget http://www.mywebsite.com/bamboodir/index.php/recur 31 3 * * * rm -rf recur What does the rm -rf recur do?
John Magnolia
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KVM guests are very slow after host upgrade to Debian Squeeze

Yesterday I upgraded a Debian Lenny server to Squeeze. This server hosts two KVM guests. One has run Debian Squeeze itself all along, the other was originally Debian Lenny, upgraded to Squeeze the day before. Everything appears to be working fine,…
Steve Madsen
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Using postfix to relay/forward to gmail

I have set-up postfix on Debian 6 and I would like to forward emails to my gmail account. This is my /etc/postfix/main.cf file: # Debian specific: Specifying a file name will cause the first # line of that file to be used as the name. The Debian…
xylar
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Install LWP Perl module on debian + Others

I'm just wondering if anyone can tell me how you install the following perl modules on debiab : install LWP install DBI install DBD::mysql install GD I tried with CPAN although when I ran perl -MCPAN -e shell install LWP It was telling me I…
Belgin Fish
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File synchronization over servers (debian) by uploading a file with PHP

I have 3 web servers for my PHP application. In front of web servers, there are load balancers. My application has a upload image form. I need to have any uploaded image via my form, simultaneously be in all 3 web servers. I try to think about…
uguraslan
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How to tell apt-get to ignore unmet dependencies forever?

I use lighttpd instead of apache, but all the packages in the debian repositories are so keen on installing apache when I install a web based package. So I installed gitweb with apt-get, telling it to ignore the apache2 dependency... Now when I try…
Waleed Ahmad
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IPsec tunnels between Linux and Solaris

I have a Solaris machine sitting out in the ether somewhere that I would like to make part of my network via IPsec. I have this working between Solaris machines but not between Solaris and Linux. I think the basic problem is that Solaris only does…
Zanchey
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snmpd.conf: can't exec script (Permission denied)

I am trying to exec command to perform checks through snmp. I am on Debian 6.0 Here is my snmpd.conf file rwcommunity public 172.23.129.0/29 syslocation "Blah syscontact admin@domain.net sysname belleville.domain.net sysdescr "Syslog Domain…
philippe
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Compiling kernel from source (for Xen), do I use plain kernel?

My VPS host uses Xen, and instead of using its custom kernels I could use my own (with pv-grub), the sample kernel of which I had installed to test this was is the following, I am running Debian 6…
Alexander
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Why do I get GPG error when running apt-update for lenny-backports?

Alright, so I'm trying to upgrade (if you could call it so) to lenny-backports as seen here, but I ran into this error when running apt-get update: W: GPG error: http://backports.debian.org lenny-backports Release: The following signatures couldn't…
Rihards
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Is there software that will help me convert my PST files into a searachable web archive?

I have used POP3 for many and many years and always used PST files for back-up purposes. I'd like to be able to create a searchable mail archive of this 12GB worth of e-mail. I had used Horde + Qmail for a while for searching e-mail, but it was…
ujjain
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Scripting installation of a virtual package provider on Debian/Ubuntu

First, what's the simplest way to get a list of (real) packages that provide a particular virtual package? 'aptitude show' seems to include it in the output for a virtual package, but 'apt-cache show' does not. However, aptitude is not always…
Trevor Robinson
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