apt-get capabilities
 

I am not new to linux but I am new today to Debian. I absoultely love it. I downloaded the 3.0 r1 iso 1 and installed the rest over the network. My question is this. What are the capabilities of apt-get besides installing application packages. I mean can it be used to do security updates to the os?

The only thing I did not like about debian is the partitioning of the hd. I would have liked for this to have more hand holding for me.

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

These 2 commands should bring your install fully up to date, security updates and all.

Debian Package Management HOWTO Version 1.1

Yes it can, just put these lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list (if they aren't allready there) And run 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade' once and a while or put those to your contab (in fact, there is a debian package called cron-apt where you can automate this process).

The partitoning thing (and many other annoyances of the installer) should be fixed in the new debian installer in the next release.

Thanks so much for your fast replies. Debian is quickly becoming my favorite distro.

One other question though. What file system do I check in the installer to get ext3. I chose linux (83 I think) and got ext2 partitions. I had ext2 on a red hat 7 machine and had nothing but problems.

The partition type is the same for most common Linux file systems (ext2fs, ext3fs, reiserfs, etc) - 83 (Linux). So that's what you choose when partitioning your disks. Later on you choose what file system you want to use.

I don't recall really but I believe you may have to boot the Woody installer CD with "bf24" to use the 2.4.18 kernel in order for the file system type chooser to appear. Somebody please correct me? :)

Håkan

So I type bf24 and then press enter at the installer for debian? I downloaded the 3.0 r1 iso 1 disk. This will install the 2.4.18 kernel? I thought the kernel version was a bit low when I installed debian.

That's correct. And in case you happen to install ext2 in the installation phase, you can convert them to ext3 by saying: 'tune2fs -j /dev/hdXX' (where XX is your partition) and editing the /etc/fstab by changing 'ext2' to 'ext3'.

You can also install new kernel afterwards by issuing 'apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-1-TYPE' , where TYPE is one of 386,586tsc,686,686-smp,k6 or k7 (see /proc/cpuinfo to pick correct one).

Great. I will have to do that tomorrow when I get back to work. Thanks again forthe help.

Yeah got the apt-get working and doing it's updates. Debian is Great!

I installed proftpd and had it running it seconds instead of an hour on redhat. I figured out the partition thing after i installed it on a couple of other machines. I guess it just wasn't real intuitive to me.

All in all great distro especially when using the bf24 switch.