On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 01:26:31AM +0000, Sam Kuper wrote: [snip long preamble]
> Sometimes, stability lets you down. > > My perception is that the greatest problems with the system of > "stability" practised by Debian and other Linux communities arise when > the upstream developer has not maintained the documentation for > earlier versions of the software he has written. This leads to a > disconnect between users reliant on package managemers and interested > in dependability, and developers interested in making software that is > faster, more fully featured, or otherwise different from the earlier > versions of their software. > > An example > ---------- > > Here is my scenario. I have a server running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS: a > "stable", recent release of a Debian-based Linux distribution. I wish > to install a security-related program called "psad" (short for "Port > Scan Attack Detector) on that server. However, the stable package of > psad for Ubuntu 8.04 turns out to house version 2.1 of psad. That > wouldn't bother me, except that??? I can't set it up! > The reason I'm having difficulty setting it up is that the > documentation on installing psad refer not to version 2.1 but to > version 2.1.4, which requires setting up differently to 2.1. The > developer's recommendation is that I upgrade to a more recent version, > but two questions arise: If Ubuntu is supplying documentation on how to set up psad for a version different than the psad binary they supply, then that is a Ubuntu bug. Or, are you saying that you are trying to implement a psad recipe from the internet that doesn't apply to the version of psad supplied in Ubuntu? For all Ubuntu is based on Debian, I don't think it follows debian policy. The policy manual says, basically and among other things, that installing a package should result in that package working out-of-the-box in some fashion only needing tweaking by the sysadmin. I've never used psad but I would be very surprised if the problem you experienced were to happen were you running Debian Stable. Since Ubuntu is based not on Debian Stable but on (I think) Unstable, I don't know how one can consider any Ubuntu release to be stable. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]