My Stuff

• dealing with 32bit packages and 64bit kernel
• packages should always install
• installing non-debian packages

Installing Debian on a new machine:

Make sure using correct install cd. Currently using lenny, most machines use 64 bit.

1. Update apt sources.list

The first thing we will do is to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file and replace “etch” or "stable" with “lenny“. If you leave it as stable will change distributions automatically when there is a new release. I follow the recommendation that people use the release name (like etch, lenny) instead of generic names (like stable, testing); this way you will have the control on when you want to upgrade. Contents of sources.list:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

2. Perform the actual upgrade

After changing apt sources we need to refresh the indexes, and for this we have to run: aptitude update Once this is done we will want to upgrade first the core apt packages: aptitude install apt dpkg aptitude and finally perform the full upgrade: aptitude full-upgrade (dist-upgrade was renamed to full-upgrade in lenny’s aptitude); or you can use: apt-get dist-upgrade

This will take a while depending on what packages you have installed (that will need to be upgraded) and on your internet connection speed. After this is done you will have to reboot your system in order to activate the kernel upgrade to the lenny 2.6.26 kernel. Also you will want to check and see that all the applications you are using are still working as expected after the upgrade.

To get time right, install ntp and ntpdate.

Remove network-manager as network-manager seems to just screw things up.

How to deal with 32bit packages with 64bit kernel

aptitude install libc6-dev-i386

Install the following debian packages on all linux boxes:

• openssh-server xemacs21 gcc make rsync strace ntp ntpdate libxp6 ia32-libs (I think just if you need 32 bit stuff)
• libnss-ldap ldap-utils libpam-ldap libpam-cracklib iotop
• denyhosts - check /etc/denyhosts.conf on miles for config
• munin-node - make sure it talks to web server
• cron-apt - sends email when there are updates. run on mail, file, and ldap servers, plus one cluster
  • http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-email-notification-upon-available-package-updates-with-cron-apt
  • /etc/cron-apt/config
  • MAILTO="user@example.com"
  • MAILON="upgrade"
  • APTCOMMAND=/usr/bin/aptitude

On cluster:

• subversion icedove gnumeric
• also installed chrome, found in /root/src, deb package
• matlab, in addition to the latest matlab, mount matlab from mimi /backup/matlab7, which is a copy of matlab7 on miles (iow, 32bit version), and it set up by creating /usr/local/bin/matlab7 to say:

 #! /bin/sh

linux32 /usr/local/matlab7/bin/matlab -nojvm

otherwise running 32bit compiled functions give error (at least for Tim) Undefined function or method 'FP4_BoundCrossZero' for input arguments of type 'double'. I got rid of exim4 on herbie, using xmail instead (hard drive only, still in image)

How to install non-debian packages:

1. untar and decompress the package (tar -xvzf filename), I only put kernel packages in /usr/src, rest go in /root/src
2. run the ./configure script in the untarred source archive's top-level directory with whatever command line arguments you need. The options that configure recognizes are usually contained in a file called INSTALL or README.
3. Run make. This will build the source code into an executable program (or programs) and may take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on the speed of the computer and the size of the package.
4. Run make install. This will install the compiled binaries, configuration files, and any libraries in the appropriate directories.

How to install deb files:

dpkg -i oneSIS-2.0.2-1.deb