Linux

Debian backports and pinning

I’m running Debian Etch because I prefer the stable Debian package tree. This is all great but the software is a little outdated compared to other distributions like Ubuntu. That is where backports come in. Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), so they will […]

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Linux

Mounting remote filesystems using SSH and Debian

This post describes how to mount a remote filesystem through SSH using the shfs kernel module on a Debian Etch server. By doing this I can access the remote filesystem as if it was a local filesystem and also use my local tools and software. This is a short description of how I made a […]

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Linux

apt-show-versions

apt-show-versions is a Debian tool that lists available package versions with distributions. This is really useful if you have a mixed stable/testing environment and want to list all packages which are from testing and can be upgraded in testing. This package is not installed automatically so you have to install it your self apt-get install […]

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Linux

Upgrade from Debian Etch to Debian Lenny

To upgrade a Debian Etch (stable) installation to testing Debian Lenny (unstable), you can do the following steps Edit sources.list sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list change all occurences of the word etch for lenny, or stable for testing Do the update and upgrade sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade That is all that is needed to upgrade […]

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Linux

Howto install Sun Java on Debian Etch

The original Sun Java 2 is available in the ‘non-free’ section of the Debian repositories. To enable this section first add the non-free repository to the apt sources file – the /etc/apt/sources.list should look like, – important parts are in bold:

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