[wellylug] debian q's

michael at diaspora.gen.nz michael at diaspora.gen.nz
Thu Mar 25 21:30:48 NZST 2004


"Alex" writes:
>a)
>
>with debian, i'm aware there is "stable" , "testing" and "unstable".
>
>is it possible to mix and match packages from the 3 release types? or 
>does one generally never do this?

It's possible, through pinning things, to do this, but generally
you'll run into problems running testing or unstable packages on a
base -stable system.

>b)
>
>is it possible to instruct apt-get to only get new packages from the 
>apt security mirror but not the regular packages?

security.debian.org is only for -stable systems; security fixes for
unstable and testing are purely a process of running regular updates.
If you have a stable system, your sources.list should contain a mirror
of stable, and security.debian.org; most updates will come from
security.debian.org.

>i've had a look at FAI, with limited success - has anyone used this 
>tool before? with any luck? has anyone used it to successfully create
>a booting CD of debian.

I've looked at FAI, and likewise found it difficult to comprehend.
If you understand kickstart, and want to use Debian unstable, you might
want to look at http://platform.progeny.com/, which has a port of Anaconda
(the Redhat installer, which supports kickstart et al) to a Debian sarge
based distro; you could conceivably use that and then use regular Debian
apt sources to update your system to Debian unstable.
    -- michael.




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