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News & events
- Announcing a delay with the German website
- Chapter 4 available for download
- Debconf 5 in Helsinki
  
  The annual Debian developer's conference, this year hosted near Helsinki.
- Debian Book available at LinuxTag 2005
  
  "The Debian System" will be on sale at the LinuxTag 2005.
- Debian Book release party
  
  Come celebrate the release of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "sarge" and the Debian Book with us!
- Debian Book to be in stores after 27 June 2005
  
  The wait has been long; the book is going to be in stores Real Soon Now.
- DPL election debate tonight
- French translation released
- German translation available February 2006
- German translation released
- Happy new year
  
  No news is good news, so allow me to at least wish you all the best for the new year!
- Interview by XYZ Computing
- Introductory chapter available for download
- Japanese translation released
- Linuxtag 2005
  
  Europe's largest event about Free Software, Linux and Open Source.
- Mail server problems fixed
- No edition planned for etch
  
  Due to a number of reasons, there will not be an updated edition of the book for etch. I am working on a version for Lenny though.
- No Starch Press releases the book world-wide
- No Starch Press to distribute the book worldwide
- Website back online
Readers' corner
- Changes
 - Alioth project initscripts-ng started (page 61)
 
 The "Development and improvement" subsection of section 2.5.1 talks about the need of an improved boot initialisation sequence. The <a href="http://alioth.debian.org/projects/initscripts-ng/ target="_blank">initscripts-ng</a> project has been started with the goal to create a better init system.
 - amd64 architecture added to official archive (page 116)
 
 The integration of the amd64 architecture into the official archive <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/02/msg00007.html" target="_blank">is underway as part of the mirror split</a>, and <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00014.html" target="_blank">the first package has been uploaded</a>. Within the next few weeks, amd64 will thus become an official Debian architecture, and it shall be released as part of Debian etch, the next stable release.
 - debedit integrated into devscripts as deb-reversion (page 239)
 
 The debedit tool referenced in the second to last paragraph of section 5.9.2 has been added to the devscripts package in version 2.9.3 (i.e. in etch). It is called deb-reversion, not debedit, however. 
 - Debian adds security support for amd64 (page 122)
 
 Even though amd64 is not (yet) an official architecture, the Debian security team <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20050811" target="_blank">has declared</a> that it will support <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/06/msg00005.html" target="_blank">the sarge release of the Debian AMD64 port</a>, which was released shortly after the official sarge release. 
 - Debian adds security support for the testing release (page 363)
 
 Joey Hess <a target="_blank" href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00006.html">announced</a> the full security support for the Debian testing release. Even though still inofficial, this makes Debian testing a viable alternative to the stable release, for those with needs for greater currency of software. 
 - Debian Bible: Jaldhar H. Vyas is third author (page 520)
 
 Jaldhar H. Vyas is the third author of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible. He joined the other two towards the end of their book release cycle.
 - Debian Bible: official title has 3.1, not 3.X (page 520)
 
 The official title of the book written by David B. Harris, Benjamin Mako Hill <a href="520-jaldhar">and Jaldhar H. Vyas</a> is Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible, not 3.X as I wrote in my book. At the time of writing, the authors had not settled for a title.
 - Debian bug tracker adds dependencies (page 532)
 
 The debbugs maintainers are on a roll and have added the ability to block bugs with other bugs. "Blocking" is the official term, though the concept may also be described as "bug dependencies." More information is available in <a target="_blank" href="http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/2005/08/12#2005-08-12-postdc5">this blog entry by Anthony Towns</a>, and <a href="http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/bts_blockers_support-2005-08-12-15-43.html" target="_blank">this one by Joey Hess</a>.
 - Debian bug tracker adds per-user tags (page 532)
 
 The Debian bug tracking system now allows users to attach their own tags to bug reports. You can find the juicy details in the <a target="_blank" href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00002.html">announcement mail</a>.
 - Debian Linux Kernel Handbook released (page 382)
 
 Jurij Smakov et al. have published the <a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank'); return false;" href="http://kernel-handbook.alioth.debian.org/">Debian Linux Kernel Handbook,</a> which documentswill help in documenting the internals of the Debian Linux Kernel build process. The document is still work in progress. Even though the kernel team does not use kernel-package, the document surely contains a great amount of useful or interesting information. 
 - Debian still fastest growing distro (page 18)
 
 <a href="/readers/changes/netcraft.com" target="_blank">Netcraft</a> has determined Debian again to be <a href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/12/05/strong_growth_for_debian.html" target="_blank">the fastest growing Linux distribution</a> (on web servers) in 2005.
 - Dissertation chapter on social aspects of the Debian community (page 46)
 
 Biella Coleman, a Ph.D. from Chicago University (see <a href="http://www.onlinepolicy.org/about/bio/coleman.shtml" target="_blank">a short biography</a>), has the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/08/msg00206.html" target="_blank">announced the release</a> of a chapter from her <a target="_blank" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=805287">dissertation on the ethics and politics of the free software movement</a>. The chapter, titled "Three ethical moments in Debian: the making of an ethical hacker part III", is the result of years of research with and within the Debian project. It is a recommended read  for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Debian community, and complements the description of the community in chapter 2.4 on pages 46ff. You can download the chapter from <a target="_blank" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=805287">this page</a>. 
 - Document about the workings of the security team (page 359)
 
 Steve Kemp has documented <a target="_blank" href="http://people.debian.org/~skx/team.html">the workings of the Debian security team</a> online for public consumption. 
 - Future popularity-contest can also use HTTP (page 256)
 
 In section 5.11.10, the popularity-contest package is introduced as a programme sending email to a central server that aggregates the data and generates statistics. Future versions of popularity-contest can optionally use the HTTP protocol as well and thus do not require a mail transport agent (such as exim4) to be installed on every system that gathers statistics.
 - Linux kernel packages for 2.6.12 and up are named linux-*. (page 260)
 
 The first item in the list on page 260 in section 5.12.2 speaks of a change in the naming scheme of the Debian kernel packages. Starting with the 2.6.12 kernel packages, the Debian Kernel Team has started using linux-* for the packages containing Linux kernel files.
 - New dpkg source package format (page 437)
 
 Chapter 9.2.1 discusses the structure of Debian source packages. Following the release of Debian sarge, a new package format will replace the current one. The new format, dubbed "Wig and Pen" (version 2.0) is fully compatible with the current format (1.0), but adds the ability for multiple tarballs to encapsulate different aspects of the package (feature branches). In particular, it is now possible to distribute the Debian-specific files in a separate tarball rather than encapsulating them in a patch. More information about the new source package format may be found on the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.dpkg.org/NewSourceFormat">dpkg.org website</a>.
 - New ftpmaster key for 2006 (page 574)
 
 On 3 January 2006, a new archive signing key for the main Debian archive was put in place. The following are the relevant data to help you verify it. <pre> URL: http://ftp-master.debian.org/ziyi_key_2006.asc ID: 2d230c5f Date: 2003-01-03 Fingerprint: 0847 50fc 01a6 d388 a643 d869 0109 0831 2d23 0c5f Creator: Anthony Towns (key 0x2a4e3eaa) </pre> As in the book, this information comes without any warranty. 
 - New Wiki page detailing Secure APT (page 373)
 
 Joey Hess added <a target="_blank" href="http://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt">a page</a> to the <a href="http://wiki.debian.org">Debian Wiki</a> with the goal to better document APT 0.6, aka. Secure APT. This should augment the information you can find in section 7.5.2. 
 - New Wiki went live (page 517)
 
 The semi-official Debian Wiki at <a target="_blank" href="http://wiki.debian.net">http://wiki.debian.net</a> now has a successor over at <a target="_blank" href="http://wiki.debian.org">http://wiki.debian.org</a>, which would finally make the Debian Wiki an official resource.
 - postfix-tls integrated into postfix post-sarge (page 208)
 
 In chapter 5.7.2, postfix-tls is used in an example to show how diverted files work. The package is also used in various other parts of the book. While the package exists in sarge, it has been removed from the archive for etch. Its functionality has been integrated into the postfix package. The theory of diverted files continues to hold.
 - Prefer aptitude over apt-get (for dist-upgrades) (page 181)
 
 Chapter 5.4 introduces APT, and the Debian way of installing, removing, and upgrading packages. The traditional front-end to APT, apt-get, may in the future be replaced by aptitude, which implements most of the command-line options of apt-get (see p. 195f) and is thus a viable drop-in replacement. The sarge release notes recommend using aptitude instead of apt-get, as it "makes safer decisions about package installations than running apt-get directly."
 - Subscribing to single bugs now possible (page 553)
 
 Section 10.6.9 states that single bug subscriptions are not yet possible and promises for this (frequently requested) feature to be available soon. Thanks to the work of Joachim Breitner, Don Armstrong, Pascal Hakim, Anthony Towns, and Colin Watson (hope I have not left anyone out), it is now possible to subscribe to single bug reports. Please see the <a target="_blank" href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/07/msg00014.html">developer announcement</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#subscribe" target="_blank">documentation</a> for more information.
 - Versioned bug reports (page 532)
 
 Following the release of sarge, the Debian debbugs team has added the ability to track package versions instead of just single packages with the Debian bug tracking system. This has been a feature much requested, which should greatly facilitate the period leading up to an official Debian release. Details of the added and changed features and commands can be found in <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/07/msg00010.html" target="_blank">the announcement</a>. 
- Errata
 - .Xsession tried if .xsession does not exist (page 101)
 
 Item 3 in section 3.3.4 states: "If the file [.xsession] is present, ./.Xsession is tried." This should be: "If the file [.xsession] is not present, ./.Xsession is tried."
 - Anthony signed the key, not James (page 373)
 
 The first text paragraph on page 373 in section 7.5.1 talks about the archive key, which was signed by one of the FTP masters, Anthony Towns. Later in the paragraph, Anthony suddenly becomes James. It should just say Anthony all along
 - Bad versioning scheme for pre-release versions (page 218)
 
 The versioning scheme for pre-release upstream  versions proposed in section 5.7.5 is not desirable: encoding the pre-release version in the Debian revision prevents a new orig.tar.gz file from being uploaded when the final release is uploaded. The following rewrite should make the situation clear. It replaces the second half of the middle paragraphon page 218, starting at "Within the Debian archive, it is customary...": One scheme could be to release 1.0-rc1 as 1.0-0+1.0rc1+1, followed by 1.0-0+1.0rc1+2, and then 1.0-1 when the final gets released. However, this approach has an inherent problem: for each upstream version, an orig.tar.gz file exists in the Debian archive; Debian revisions are released as diff.gz files against the orig.tar.gz file (see chapter 9.2.12). In the proposed scheme, the orig.tar.gz file will contain the 1.0-rc1 upstream release, and when the final 1.0 release is to be packaged, the diff.gz file for the 1.0-1 Debian release will have to encompass all upstream changes between 1.0-rc1 and 1.0 as well, which is undesirable. Thus, a better approach is to encode the pre-release version as part of the upstream vesion. This can be done in one of two ways: using the previous upstream version as base (let's assume 0.90), or an obviously fake upstream version that sorts before the final release: 0.90+1.0rc1-1 or 0.999+1.0rc1-1. Now, upon release of 1.0, a new orig.tar.gz file can be uploaded to replace the previous one. With that in mind, it should be easy to infer the upstream version number from the Debian version, even in complex cases. 
 - Changes are not expected in the stable release (page 24)
 
 Section 1.4.2 talks about anticipated changes to the Debian project and system. As should become apparent when reading section 4.3.3, such changes are not to be expected in the stable release of the operating system, which is one of its main selling points. Thus, if you only track stable and have no interest in the surrounding project or new developments, you need not be concerned with these changes. I keep a <a href="/readers/changes">list of changes</a> online to make it easier for you to track developments since the book's release.
 - Code snippet involuntarily repeated (page 278)
 
 The first example on page 278 in section 6.1.4 contains a repeated instruction. You can ignore all code after the second command, update-alternatives --display editor, and its output. 
 - Command is dh_install, not dg_install (page 471)
 
 In the second sentence of the first item of the list on page 471 in section 9.2, the command should have been dh_install, not dg_install.
 - Command should be adduser, not aduser (page 281)
 
 The command referenced in the third row of table 6.1 should be adduser, not aduser.
 - Components select non-free software, not non-US (page 166)
 
 The item on components on the top of page 166 states that components "also specify when non-US software is to be used." This should say "non-free software" instead. Components cannot be used to select non-US software. 
 - Confusing year: rex was released in December 1996 (page 32)
 
 The fourth paragraph of the subsection entitled "The early days" in "A history lesson" states that Debian rex was released in December "of the same year". This refers to the release of buzz in June 1996, not the release of the Debian botch in December 1995. rex was released in December 1996.
 - Deborphan may need to be run iteratively (page 248)
 
 Deborphaner is not iterative (or recursive, depending on how you look at it). In one run it may suggest to remove a set of packages, but it fails to identify packages that would be obsolete if the user removed the packages suggested in the first run.
 - Default-Release setting in wrong namespace (page 169)
 
 The apt.conf examples on page 169, which illustrate the two different syntax styles, list Default-Release under the wrong namespace. Instead of APT::Get, it should just be APT: <pre>APT::Default-Release "sarge"; [...] </pre> and: <pre>APT { [...] Default-Release "sarge"; [...] } </pre>
 - Definition of source package type flipped (page 233)
 
 In the first paragraph of the subsection titled "Obtaining source package" talks about the two types of source packages in the Debian archive: packages requiring modifications prior to their inclusion in Debian, and packages included directly. The text calls the former the class of "native packages" and terms the latter as "normal packages." It should be the other way around.
 - dpkg does not automatically complete installation after dependencies are met (page 157)
 
 In chapter 5.3.7, I state: <blockquote>Since dpkg remembers the administrators request to install postfix, it will retry and automatically complete the installation as soon as the dependencies are fulfilled.</blockquote> This is not correct. dpkg sets the desired state of the postfix package to "install", but it does not automatically configure it when netbase is installed. 
 - Dpkg does report an error when asked to configure a configured package (page 141)
 
 At the end of section 5.3.2, I claim that dpkg does not report an error when asked to configure an already configured package. In fact, dpkg does report an error: <pre>~# dpkg --configure postfix [300] dpkg: error processing postfix (--configure): package postfix is already installed and configured Errors were encountered while processing: postfix </pre>
 - dpkg-query command line should specify postfix, not mc (page 148)
 
 The example displaying the use of the --showformat option to dpkg-query should obviously be: <pre># dpkg-query --show --showformat='${Package}\t${Status}\n' postfix postfix install ok installed</pre> In the book, it unfortunately specifies mc as the last argument in the command line. I had previously used mc as an example, but switched almost all examples over to postfix as a tribute to my <a href="http://postfix.org" target="_blank">favourite mail server</a>, and its author, Wietse Venema.
 - dwarfs-debian-guide package out of date and removed (page 519)
 
 The dwarfs-debian-guide package no longer exists in the sarge archive. It has been removed in December 2003 by reason of being out of date (according to <a target="_blank" href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt">removals.txt</a>).
 - Elections had been completed by the time of release (page 33)
 
 The last sentence of the "Into the next millenium" subsection should not be there. It was overlooked during the time we were waiting for sarge to release. 
 - Faulty way of spawning sshd in single-user mode (page 299)
 
 In chapter 6.3.1, I suggest to add sshd to the /etc/inittab file to be able to login to a remote system even in single-user mode: <pre># sed -i -e "/^~~/ish:S:respawn:sshd -Do 'AllowUsers=root'" /etc/inittab</pre> Unfortunately, there are two errors with this: first, sshd must be called with the complete path (to guard against trojans), and init must be told to reload the configuration file after the change. The following corrects both problems: <pre># sed -i -e "/^~~/ish:S:respawn:/usr/sbin/sshd -Do 'AllowUsers=root'" /etc/inittab # telinit q</pre>
 - Figure 4.1 - Archive Tree
 - Free software is not a subset of Open Source (page 40)
 
 In chapter 2.2.2, Free Software is incorrectly described as a subset of Open Source: while it is true that there are there Open Source licenses which are not FSF-Free or not approved by Debian, that is a matter of interpretation, not of principles, as the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php" target="_blank">Open Source Definition</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines" target="_blank">Debian Free Software Guidelines</a> match almost word for word.
 - Gnoppix is based on Ubuntu, not vice versa (page 564)
 
 The last sentence of A.2.3 states that Gnoppix is the basis for the Ubuntu Live CD. This is not accurate. Andreas Müller, the developer of Gnoppix, actually developed the Ubuntu Live CD first, and then reused this work for Gnoppix. Thus, Gnoppix is based on the Ubuntu Live CD, not vice versa.

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