Hi, i have been using linux for 2 months now, before that i had been working my way through the arch wiki and tutorials. I migrated to debian because, and having done some reading this may be a bit contovsersial, i am not very 'techy'as i am a mental health nurse I want a system which i can initially put in some time to get up and running how i like and not have to tinker with it every week of so as i was doing in arch plus i only want to use about 5 programs and don't really need nor want bleeding edge software just a simple, stable platform where i know what is happening and i can just get on with doing the things that i need a computer for.

In arch dealing with Daemons was easy /etc/rc.conf and a couple of other files meant that configuration was simple. I have been looking through debians /etc/ and i am feeling a little confused on how to handle the system-v and how to manage deamons.

Would it be possible if someone could direct me to a a couple of tutorials about this possibly a simple one and then a more comprehensive one?

Kind regards

Richard

I have only encountered one problem in setting up my system and that is in relation to wireless. As i will be using wicd i am not too interested in using /etc/network/interfaces but in order to get the network configured during install i had to change my router from WPA to WEP, for obvious reasons i want to use WPA. This is not the problem as such as i'll be using wicd, the use of which is well documented but i am just curious where did the installer write the configuration for WEP access as i see no entry for it in /etc/network/interfaces?

For Debian prior to Squeeze, the update-rc.d command can be used to dis-/en-able boot/shutdown scripts in the various run levels. man update-rc.d explains but it is not exactly introductory level!

For Squeeze, it is the insserv command instead of update-rc.d.

I could not find a tutorial or HOWTO for insserv.

Some of the daemons are dis-/en-abled by variables set in the /etc/defaults directory. This is described in the Debian Reference Manual.

BTW adding a second post to the thread on another topic is probably not the best way to get answers. Firstly it takes your thread off the "zero reply list" so it is not automatically "bumped" into the new posts and secondly it will get confusing if people start to answer both questions in the same thread. You could start a new thread with the content of your second post, and then edit the second post, removing the content and giving a link to your new thread.

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My experience with debian squeeze was pretty good,everything installed & ran from the gate including my hp printer.If you choose expert mode for your installation you can enable the non-free drivers, atleast have the repos available to you as soon as you reboot.

I found something called sysv-rc-conf that makes it very easy to control Debian startup.

It's what I used to enable a boot to a terminal without removing GDM by setting runlevel 3 not to be GUI.

I spent the day tackling it yesterday and after a complete re-install i came to the conclusion that i must have been very tired as i made several silly mistakes during the intitial install, especially concerning wi-fi. Thank you for your advice about daemon handling and i think i now have everything sorted and have a much improved understanding of sys-v and debian's way of handling thing although just enough to work on if i ever need to make any further adjustments. Thank you.

I have used sysv-rc-conf and find it very efficient.

There used to be another program called sysvconf which is no longer available.
Does anyone know why it was deprecated?