[clug] Debian Sarge or Ubuntu for a server?

Alex Satrapa grail at goldweb.com.au
Wed Jun 15 06:30:41 GMT 2005


On 15 Jun 2005, at 13:08, Mick wrote:

> Are you amplifying my thoughts, or saying I'm wrong - need to know?

You weren't wearing your tinfoil hat. Thus I was at least reading  
your thoughts...

I am a control freak. I prefer machines to not display unexpected  
behaviour. In the past I've had problems with packages not properly  
cleaning up files that they leave behind (eg: stuff that's generated  
by the post-install scripts, or by the application itself, that the  
prerm/postrm scripts don't remove) or upgrade (I can't remember what  
it was, but one application relocated its config from /etc/app.conf  
to /etc/package/app.conf, but didn't remove the existing /etc/ 
app.conf file... caused me a fair bit of grief until I used strace to  
find that it was opening a file other than the one I was editing).  
And don't get me started on the mess that is xfree86 on Debian...  
every time I upgraded that I'd lose fonts, and suffer other major  
breakage.

Besides, reinstalling from scratch is a great test of the disaster  
recovery procedure. In fact, it's a great way to force you to *have*  
a disaster recovery procedure!

In my current backup/recovery system, I'm using bootcd to produce a  
bootable CD based on a generic installation which supports all the  
hardware I (expect to) use. This is basically a shortcut around using  
the Debian Installer since DI has too many buttons to press.

Alex


More information about the linux mailing list