wjsullivan.net

Overloading the Machine

NotesDebian

These are my notes on working with Debian systems and related tools.

Aptitude

~G searches the tag field. Like, aptitude search ~Gwork-with::video.

~i searches installed packages.

To downgrade a package in unstable, add a sources.list entry for testing, then do aptitude update and aptitude install package/testing.

Packaging

To list the contents of a package, use ar tv <package file>. Or, use debc in the package source tree.

Use debi to test installing the package.

To list all the packages with a particular maintainer, you can do grep-available -sMaintainer,Package john@wjsullivan.net.

To list all of the packages that depend on python, try: grep-available -F Depends python -s Package,Depends

apt-cache rdepends python

Python

http://wiki.debian.org/Python/Packaging

With git

Install git-buildpackage and git-doc.

http://wiki.debian.org/PackagingWithGit

Generate the debian/changelog file:

git-dch —release —meta —full —git-author

Commit the changelog and build the package:

git commit -a -m "debian/changelog for release"

git-buildpackage —git-tag

git-pbuilder update

Setting up a repository

Use dput and mini-dinstall.

Rename a machine

Edit /etc/hostname and then run /etc/init.d/hostname.sh start.

Input layer

I had to get into this to get my thinkpad keys working.

lsinput shows input devices.

input-event monitors input devices.

Philosophy and policy

Links

http://www.debian.org/devel/: The Developer's Corner.

http://db.debian.org/: Queries about developers and machines.

http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/: The Work Needing and Prospective Packages list. What's orphaned, what needs new maintainers, what's being packaged and what would be nice to have packaged.

http://qa.debian.org/: The Debian Quality Assurance headquarters. Help is appreciated!

http://bugs.debian.org/: The bug tracking system (BTS).

http://www.debian.org/security/: Security related info. Please read their FAQ, as it will save you (and others) a lot of headaches.

http://packages.debian.org/: Information about packages in the Debian archive.

http://buildd.debian.org/: Build status of Debian packages.

http://lists.debian.org/: Mailing list subscription and archives.

http://qa.debian.org/developer.php: Provides you with an overview of all your packages.

http://lintian.debian.org/: Automated lintian tests on all packages in the Debian Archive.

http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/column/libpkg-guide/: Debian Library Packaging guide.

http://packages.qa.debian.org/: The Package Tracking System.

http://people.debian.org/~walters/descriptions.html: A small Guide "Writing Debian package descriptions".

https://buildd.debian.org/~luk/status/: Watch your package status.

http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html: Frequently asked questions about why a package is rejected from the NEW queue.

http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001: The vote on the GFDL

http://www.debian.org/Bugs/pseudo-packages

Emacs Policy

Devscripts

rc-alert downloads the list of release-critical bugs, and outputs a list of installed packages with rc bugs.

dpkg -L devscripts grep bin/ shuf -n10 is a fun way to learn about other devscripts.

Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took *thousands* of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.

-- Dave Barry