Changes

amd64 architecture added to official archive (page 116)

madduck — 2006-03-16T09:24:19Z

The integration of the amd64 architecture into the official archive is underway as part of the mirror split, and the first package has been uploaded. 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.

Debian adds security support for amd64 (page 122)

madduck — 2005-08-11T14:55:20Z

Even though amd64 is not (yet) an official architecture, the Debian security team has declared that it will support the sarge release of the Debian AMD64 port, which was released shortly after the official sarge release.

Debian still fastest growing distro (page 18)

madduck — 2006-01-10T22:42:18Z

Netcraft has determined Debian again to be the fastest growing Linux distribution (on web servers) in 2005.

Prefer aptitude over apt-get (for dist-upgrades) (page 181)

madduck — 2005-07-19T05:56:49Z

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."

postfix-tls integrated into postfix post-sarge (page 208)

madduck — 2005-07-25T10:43:40Z

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.

debedit integrated into devscripts as deb-reversion (page 239)

madduck — 2005-08-09T18:57:21Z

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.

Future popularity-contest can also use HTTP (page 256)

madduck — 2005-07-25T08:16:04Z

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)

madduck — 2005-07-26T00:08:23Z

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.

Document about the workings of the security team (page 359)

madduck — 2005-06-27T19:43:58Z

Steve Kemp has documented the workings of the Debian security team online for public consumption.

Debian adds security support for the testing release (page 363)

madduck — 2005-09-25T12:56:46Z

Joey Hess announced 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.

New Wiki page detailing Secure APT (page 373)

madduck — 2006-01-07T10:53:20Z

Joey Hess added a page to the Debian Wiki 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.

Debian Linux Kernel Handbook released (page 382)

madduck — 2006-01-06T19:04:39Z

Jurij Smakov et al. have published the Debian Linux Kernel Handbook, 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.

New dpkg source package format (page 437)

madduck — 2005-06-25T20:49:25Z

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 dpkg.org website.

Dissertation chapter on social aspects of the Debian community (page 46)

madduck — 2006-01-06T19:13:29Z

Biella Coleman, a Ph.D. from Chicago University (see a short biography), has the announced the release of a chapter from her dissertation on the ethics and politics of the free software movement. 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 this page.

New Wiki went live (page 517)

madduck — 2006-01-17T21:46:05Z

The semi-official Debian Wiki at http://wiki.debian.net now has a successor over at http://wiki.debian.org, which would finally make the Debian Wiki an official resource.

Debian Bible: official title has 3.1, not 3.X (page 520)

madduck — 2005-06-21T11:25:08Z

The official title of the book written by David B. Harris, Benjamin Mako Hill and Jaldhar H. Vyas 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 Bible: Jaldhar H. Vyas is third author (page 520)

madduck — 2005-06-21T11:25:08Z

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 bug tracker adds per-user tags (page 532)

madduck — 2005-09-02T17:22:57Z

The Debian bug tracking system now allows users to attach their own tags to bug reports. You can find the juicy details in the announcement mail.

Debian bug tracker adds dependencies (page 532)

madduck — 2005-08-12T19:10:28Z

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 this blog entry by Anthony Towns, and this one by Joey Hess.

Versioned bug reports (page 532)

madduck — 2005-08-24T22:31:41Z

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 the announcement.

New ftpmaster key for 2006 (page 574)

madduck — 2006-01-04T12:39:24Z

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.

        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)

As in the book, this information comes without any warranty.

Subscribing to single bugs now possible (page 553)

madduck — 2005-07-22T08:43:05Z

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 developer announcement and the documentation for more information.

Alioth project initscripts-ng started (page 61)

madduck — 2005-11-21T11:45:01Z

The "Development and improvement" subsection of section 2.5.1 talks about the need of an improved boot initialisation sequence. The initscripts-ng project has been started with the goal to create a better init system.