Re: [linux-security] supported distributions

[Matthew Laird <lairdm@sfu.ca>]

I've been a Debian-boy for years, so I might have a little bias, but
here's some info on migrating to it from Red Hat.

A local mirror might not be needed, which would save Martin a lot of work.  
:)  The NRC already has a mirror 
(ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/debian.org), and if I recall we have a
nice fat, free pipe between us and them.  If we do want a campus mirror 
Debian has information on how to set one up (http://www.debian.org/mirror/).

Debian also has some options if you want similar functionality to 
Kickstart under Red Hat.  Just announced yesterday was anaconda for Debian 
(http://platform.progeny.com/anaconda/) and there's FAI (Fully Automatic 
Installation) (http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/) which has been 
around for years.  There's also jigdo which allows the creation of custom 
images (http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/) but that would probably be 
more useful for workstations.

As for NFS support, it's been a year since I last installed Debian but I'm 
fairly certain it does support installation via NFS.

I'm certainly going to investigate migrating our cluster to Debian, SuSE 
just has some eccentricities which bother me.  I'd be happy to share my 
experience doing this with anyone else on campus who's interested.

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Pete Lypkie wrote:

> There's no need for debian files to be on a mountable file-system.  Debian 
> has been planned around network access for the packages, and can be done 
> through safer methods like http.  Debian users are used to the process of 
> doing "apt-get update" to fetch a file called Packages.gz from the mirror, 
> which lists available packages, and then "apt-get install foobar" to 
> install a specific package called foobar, or "apt-get upgrade" to get any 
> newer versions that are available.  I believe there are many tools 
> available to assist with various mirror tasks....years ago i used one 
> called "apt-move" but i'm not sure if it's still around, or the best tool.
> 
> There seems to be one called "debmirror" written by Joey Hess (one of the 
> most respected debian developers for years).
> 
> I apologize for not having more time to assist, but a quick search turned 
> up this page:   http://www.debian.org/mirror/ftpmirror
> 
> I'll try to ask around to see if someone in the sfu linux user group has 
> more info, or time to help.
> 
> 

-- 
Matthew Laird
SysAdmin/Web Developer, Brinkman Laboratory, MBB Dept.
Simon Fraser University