The Debian Maintenance HOWTO

Abstract

The aim of this document is to give users a quick introduction into Maintaining a Debian System. For further information please refer to the proper chapter.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2001-2011,2014 joey Schulze <joey@infodrom.org> and others.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation version 2.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 History
  • 1.2 Special Terms, Acronyms and Abbreviations
  • 1.3 Thanks and Credits
  • 1.4 Feedback
  • 1.5 Todo
• 2 Installation
  • 2.1 Boot Medium
  • 2.2 Hardware
  • 2.3 Preload Modules
  • 2.4 Configuring Device Driver Modules
  • 2.5 Network
  • 2.6 Passwords
  • 2.7 Selecting Tasks
  • 2.8 Installing Packages
  • 2.9 Configuring X11
  • 2.10 Configuring ISDN
  • 2.11 Custom Boot Floppies
• 3 Package Maintenance
  • 3.1 Package Basics
  • 3.2 Package Managers
  • 3.3 Installed Packages
  • 3.4 Information about Packages
  • 3.5 Locate Files and Packages
  • 3.6 New Packages
  • 3.7 Package Database Update
  • 3.8 APT Sources
  • 3.9 Package Difference Files
  • 3.10 Introduction to dpkg
  • 3.11 Introduction to apt-get
  • 3.12 Configuring APT
  • 3.13 Brandnew Packages
  • 3.14 Packages not in Debian
  • 3.15 Virtual packages
  • 3.16 Pseudo packages
  • 3.17 Package Pools and Distributions
  • 3.18 The testing Distribution
  • 3.19 Forcing Package Installation
  • 3.20 Creating Local Archives
  • 3.21 Upgrading single Packages
  • 3.22 Upgrading everything
  • 3.23 Distribution-Upgrade
  • 3.24 Upgrading to unstable
• 4 Alternatives
  • 4.1 Display Alternatives
  • 4.2 Configure Alternative
  • 4.3 Add Alternative
  • 4.4 Remove Alternative
• 5 System Administration
  • 5.1 System cloning
  • 5.2 Keyboard
  • 5.3 Time and Timezone
  • 5.4 Systemwide environment configuration
  • 5.5 Languages (locales)
  • 5.6 Character sets (foreign characters)
• 6 Menus
  • 6.1 Menu files
• 7 Booting and Runlevel
  • 7.1 Reloading/Restarting a service
  • 7.2 Adding a new service
  • 7.3 Removing a service
• 8 Support
  • 8.1 Via Mail
  • 8.2 Online
  • 8.3 Personal
• 9 Building Packages
  • 9.1 Source Packages
  • 9.2 Unpacking the Source on Debian
  • 9.3 Unpacking the Source somewhere
  • 9.4 Rebuilding
  • 9.5 Packaging recent source
  • 9.6 Backporting
  • 9.7 Finding new upstream source
  • 9.8 New upstream source
  • 9.9 Packaging

The Debian Maintenance HOWTO