Hi, > I am wondering what the best way is to go about staying up to > date. If I run > apt-get -s upgrade I'm told that apt wants to upgrade about > 15 packages, most > of which seem to be related to X (we won't ever be using X on > this server. it > wasn't originally installed and I"d like to get rid of it but > some other > package I installed had a dependancy on some gtk thing that > had one on X. Oh > well).
You should just uninstall all the packages related to X, then ;) > > Could anyone confirm that "upgrade" is the right way to stay > up to date. I'm > not going to run it automatically, and I'll always do a test > run first to > make sure nothing disastrous is going to happen. > > Is running upgrade on a regular basis a bad idea for any reason? On the contrary: I think running upgrade on a regular basis is a very good idea. I've been running debian testing for a few weeks now, and I 'have' to do updates once about every two days. Never had any problems - you just run 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' and get a cup of coffee, and everything just keeps working perfectly. Certainly if you're going to check which updates are being done, I don't see what could go wrong. By the way - my stable system needs updates once about every two weeks, just so you know. Because I got tired of checking if updates were needed by hand (not something you're willing to do if updates are , I wrote a small cronjob that runs 'apt-get update; apt-get -s upgrade' and checks if the output contains "0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove". If it doesn't, it sends me an e-mail :) > > It just seems like I'll need to be as up to date as possible > when Sarge is > declared stable in order to make a smooth transition to > Sarge/Stable. Correct > me if I'm wrong. I've always found it better to update > packages a little at a > time rather than wait till there's dozens of updates to install. I think this is the way to go, though I'm not exactly sure about the entire debian testing/sarge/woody/etc system..... I do agree that it's better to update packages a little at a time rather than lots and lots and lots of packages at once. > > If anyone has advise on how to keep a Testing system secure, > I'd really like to hear it. If security is really an issue to you: lots of websites exist on how to make a linux system secure, involving very strict SSH settings, firewalls, etc. For the average user (such as myself) though, I think it should be enough to update your programs (packages) regularly, in order to not be harmed by script kiddies exploiting recent security leaks..... Good luck, Dan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
