Debian mirrors and sources.list selections

Damien Elmes clug at repose.cx
Wed Jul 3 16:13:29 EST 2002


Matthew Hawkins <matt at mh.dropbear.id.au> writes:

> Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au) wrote:
>> Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
>> > 
>> > Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
>> > > I've set my /etc/apt/sources.list to look at unstable.  However, this did not
>> > > work for http://security.debian.org.  The best I could do here was woody.  Is
>> > > this because that unstable is always going to be at least as up-to-date as
>> > > security anyway, and I should just remove that line???
>> > 
>> > There is no 'security' repository for unstable. The idea is that security
>> > is not a feature of 'unstable', and there is no point is such urgent patches.
>> 
>> Well, The Debian list just announced the availability of security
>> updates
>> for woody. Just add
>> 
>> deb http://security.debian.org/ woody/updates main contrib non-free
>
> woody != unstable
>
> There are no security updates for unstable, I guess because unstable
> will get the new packages in any case.  They're also probably trying to
> wean people off running unstable in the future.

in the case of the recent openssh fiasco, the woody security updates had a new
version of ssh available before it made it into the unstable repository. so
it's wise to have it in your archives if you run unstable anyway.

>
> Andrew Bartlett (abartlet at samba.org) wrote:
>> Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
>> 
>> > Other than that, I already beginning to think that apt-get is the best thing
>> > since sliced bread.  I had so many headaches with RedHat rpm dependencies,
>
> It's not apt that gives you the no-headaches and the proper
> dependencies.  It's the .deb package format and the work of the Debian
> maintainers to provide quality packages to a written standard/policy.
> This is the opposite of Redhat, where the rpm format is sloppy and
> there's no focus on quality packages at all, there's not even a standard
> to follow.  And people wonder why they get dependency problems.
>
> This is one reason I don't think any distribution should follow Redhat's
> LSB.  For distributions such as Debian with a superior package
> management system, it means lowering quality down to the gutter where
> Redhat is.  My apologies to insulted gutters.
>
>> For those who think that RedHat is still worth looking at - you could
>> consider apt-rpm.
>
> This isn't going to solve the problems at all.  The *only* thing apt
> gives you is a neat way of easily locating packages you can install.
> This has been possible on Redhat since way back when using rpmfind.
> You then still get the dependency problems any way - whereas on Debian
> the packages apt has found don't have such problems *provided* you don't
> do anything dumb like try to mix releases. (this only happens if you put
> in unofficial deb sources, like gnome2/kde3 or what have you)
>
> On that note, somebody mentioned using both 'official' and 'local'
> mirrors - I'd just like to say that the local mirrors ARE official
> mirrors.  eg, ftp.planetmirror.com is ftp.au.debian.org.  You're meant
> to be using the local mirror for your country, which is meant to be
> updated automagically by a nightly push from master.debian.org.
> (I say 'meant to be' because I've found planetmirror to be out of sync
> on occasion)
>
>
> David Clarke (gadicath at dishevelled.net) wrote:
>> I've not had problems with planetmirror being out of sync, I have had
>> problems with connecting to it before.  mirror.aarnet.edu.au is the one
>> I'm using at the moment, it's normally alright.  I've also used
>> http://mirror.pacific.net.au/ which was alright too.
>
> Heh, my experience is the opposite.  I recently moved from planetmirror
> to mirror.aarnet as planetmirror was out of sync.  I had to switch back
> today as good ol' telstra.not isn't routing me towards mirror.aarnet
> past  6  GigabitEthernet3-0.ken-core4.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.12.153)
> I have LOS to telstra tower - can I get a wireless connection through
> that straight to the hosting box down in the ANU ? ;-)

-- 
Damien Elmes




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