Debian 3.0......ya,...so...now what?

[RBUL]

I've been happily using and learning about Linux so I thought that I would try another distro just for funzees. I was impressed with a page I read posted at the Debian site.....seemed to actually be written in intelligible prose and was very inviteing to try the latest and greatest edition of the software. I navigated through all the how to stuff, and managed to rip an iso cd image from the appropriate mirror site...I had high hopes that perhaps at last this would be a distro that would auto install or at minimum be relatively painless to get up and running.........boy was I sorely mistaken.......very confusing install....too many questions and options to wade through.....at any rate, determined, I now have the thing bootable and it passed the smoke test.......trouble is ...no gui....and I'm stuck in command line hell.....how do I even find what got installed? and start to configure Xfree86?....please don't tell me to read the friggin manuals and docs, I have enough books and docs here to sink a ship already that are written in gobledygook and not very helpfull ...what can I type to find the installed packages file? and how do I begin to configure X? and my most important question of all is "why the hell should joe average user have to do any of this?....I long for the day when I can get some work done instead of screwing around with my operating system. I'm tired of playing with my tools, I want to build something!

[Dun'kalis]

Calm down. Debian is awesome. First, if you want testing, edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change the words stable to testing.

Now, type apt-get install xserver-xfree86. This will install X and twm. There ya go.

EDIT: Debian almost maintains itself. If you have an always-on internet connection, you can make a cron job that upgrades your system daily. Its the installation and configuration that a killer. Its totally worth it.

[RBUL]

Thanks for you rapid post....I will try to type in what you suggested and inform you of my results.......I do so want Debian to be "the one" but it's not very intuitive to say the least........will keep on truckin though

[RBUL]

typed in apt-get as per your suggestion and I got a message that xfree86 had been flagged as a dependency but not installed.....so now I need to hook up to the internet and fetch the packages to configure xfree86. I did my homework and know what to get but what do I type to get ppp to work and get hooked up to the package download section at Debian....I know I successfully configured ppp during the install beacause I was there before, but I can't just boot from the install cd and load more packages? why not? Once again.....tell me what to type...pleeeeeeeezzzzzz.

Thank You All for your help.

[Fryguy8]

can't help you with ppp, but for some help on debian


irc channel irc.debian.org #debian is a great asset

dpkg --get-selections will list installed packages

apt-cache search fooblah searches the package database

apt-get update updates the package list (do this before an upgrade)

apt-get upgrade looks at the current package list, and upgrades things.

apt-get dist-upgrade is used when upgrading to a new major version.

My first suggestion is to make sure you get your internet connection working (it's essential IMO to run debian properly)

Next, apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to make sure your current system is up to date

After that, to install a base X system:

apt-get install x-window-system-core
apt-get install "window manager of your choice"

/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 is the X configuration file.

After you get X running, I suggest you tune your kernel and be on your way to a highly optimized system (after X and your kernel are done, you are officially on easy street :)

[RBUL]

I'm slammin the lid on this box to hook up my other hard drive to get busy with your solid suggestions........thanks a million....will post results......PEACE

[rustskull]

If apt-get isn't easy for you to use, I use dselect and tasksel sometimes coz I'm an ijut. dselect (from command line as root) will give you a list of ALL packages that are indexed on your current system. If your eth is up and working and you are online, you can even choose to load them up via the internet or from another machine that has it on them.

If you have all 7 (!) disks for deb 3.0, you can just go through dselect and it will rewrite your sources.list file, which is where it looks to see where it is supposed to be grabbing packages from.

Pick the first selection in dselect, tell it you want to use cdrom, and keep feedin it disks until you run out. If you ahve a fast connection and you want something that will keep up with broadband, ftp://mirrors.rcn.net and ftp://debian.teleglobe.net (or something similar) seem to have fat pipes to the backbone...there's another one like .mil.gov or something towards the end of the mirrors list that has a fat pipe too, but I use that as a back up.

I'm installing online this second and I'm getting anywhere from 40-65kB/s throughput. That's a hell of a lot faster than loading from the cdrom. Note the uppercase "B" meaning "bytes" instead of "bits"...a byte=8 bits, so speed is actually 8x faster than you think.

Don't forget to dial in security.debian.org to get your patches automatically updated.

tasksel works okay, but the meta packages sometimes leave out a few things that you might want or miss a dependancy/conflict. The best way to go about it is after you ahve your sources.list file set up the way you want it is to use tasksel to select large groups first, let that finish (it will probably complain a little about some missing dependancies or unable to config something yet) and then use dselect, going to the select menu, select nothing (unless you ahve to resolve some dependancies/conflicts, then let it pretty much guide you), then go to the install selected packages an it will install all the stuff that the meta packages missed plus config all your stuff for you as best it/you can.

you might have to run the select/install process a couple of times to make sure that you nail all the discrepancies and get it autoconfigured as much as possible, but after dselect stops saying there is anything left to install/configure, then you can see if there are any real problems.

it sounds a lot more complicated than it is. The deal is that some packages cannot be configured unless another package is configured first. With tens of thousands of files that can be in a distro, it takes a couple times to run through it all. The great thing about debian is you can choose anything in the distro, and after a couple rounds of dselect, it's usually configured and done and running just fine, regardless of dependancies/conflicts...they get resolved. 7 solid cds of solid software. it all works. it's all free.

Give it a couple of chances. xwindow stuff is sometimes difficult in any distro, and once debian is up, you get to be the laziest sob alive with maintenence...you even get security autoupdated, how much more do you want? Windoze can't even match that, for all their head start. the xwin stuff is some of the most complex things about linux and the hardest thing to keep running free. the xfree guys have put up with a lot of crap too, so if you ever come across one, give em a pat on the back.

HTH

-rust

[RBUL]

I will be sure and do that should I meet any code monkeys around town here.

I'm going around the dselect program for the second time as you stated....still havn't given up yet, but still can't even get startx or xconfigurator to work yet. Perhaps I'll stumble upon the magic words soon.........back to the terminal for another bout of conversational gobledygook and error messages.....I'm learning though.......my snooping around has uncovered an actual xfree86 file , but I can't seem to get all the pieces of the puzzle together yet.........anyway......hope to post possitive results soon

[rustskull]

if you want it to blow away all your previous configs so that you can get it started fresh (which might be what's happening)...just to make sure we're on the same page, when I say use dselect and do install/configure, I don't mean uninstall or reinstall or anything...dselect picks most of what you need automatically and the most you should have to do to get up and running the unconscious way is just let it do what it wants when you go in.

If you see a screen that says there is a conflict, just hit the sapce bar and go in and hit enter to get back out. If you look between those two keystrokes you will see a list of reccommended stuff etc etc but it should have already selected what is critical to make it go.

My install today completed just fine, but I can't configure a bunch of stuff...seems this 4G drive I got from the junk pile at work has some issues...going through a e2fsck -c right now to see if it's going to be recoverable. It makes this nice TONK noise when it gets to a suspect block...

So anyhow, if you want to make sure that you're starting fresh you can go through an uninstall/purge cycle. You see, debian is real nice about not blowing away your config files if you uninstall something and want to reinstall it later...the down side is that sometimes you have to manually purge (it's better to do it this way and then clean up any empty directories left, than vice versa...try to stay within the pacakge system's record of programs) what's left. I think it's something like if you go into the select portion, you can pick a symbol (should be the "_" underscore instead of +/-/=) that will purge it, or if that doesn't work then hike up "man dpkg" and find out what the sequence is...it's like dpkg --purge packagename, but you shouldn't have to do it...dselect is calling dpkg anyhow, directed by the symbol you gave it...

after you purge the conffiles and all, then go back and reinstall it and it should make you go back through a reconfigure process.

make sure you know what kind of video card you have and what chips are on it as far as ramdac and/or memory...and that you know what your monitor can handle as far as refresh rates and such. You can probably get away with doing a "simple" config, which should bring upa generic session that almost any decently new (less than 8 years old?) hardware should be able to handle...and then you can go from there for your specific card monitor....if you kow a little about your card/monitor pick the medium install and use that. it should work. I htink you just gimped your config file and can't get it to reconfig and stuff.

you can invoke a default config from the dpkg command line, but I forget how to do it...it's not hard, but I've never had to use it so it's not in my mind real clear.

try
dpkg --status pkgnames
to see how they're doing...


man dpkg should tell you somewhere how to force it back to the default configs...

another thing I came across addresses another question from a separate thread regarding if the apt/dpkg tools can be used on other systems...heh...linux from scratch crew strikes again..!

http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/apt.txt

I gotta remember that one...

-rust

PS I meant if you come across em in c(yber)-space. unless you in a LUG, you almost never meet these people in m(eat)-space.

[rustskull]

well, the TONK is gone (btw, used e2fsck -c -y /dev/hdb1 did the trick automagically after a few round..bad block checks take forrrrrrrrreeeeevvvveeeerrrr, bu tif you have a suspect drive i suggest you take the time when doing the primary install), but now the applications that were installed are all segfaulting when I tried to make them configure, so I went to dselect and purged everything that said it was broken or unconfigd. crap. python was fscked up. EVERYTHING kde uses python (or seems to). I purged the downloaded .deb pkg files too (maybe I shouldn't have, but I wasnted to make sure that it wasn't them what was on the bad blocks too...) so through the magic of apt-get...heh...I ran tasksel again, reselected the metapackages for what I'm loading, and it's cranking away on the ftp sites, re-downloading about 70MB worth of junk. In about 10 more minutes the thing should be expanding everything and configing it, automatically again. Bear in mind, I haven't had to touch the cdrom drive since I booted the install system. pretty damn slick.

I'll let ya know how it goes here in a bit...

-rust

[rustskull]

alright, it's up. I heard one last TONK when things were configing, but it didn't repeat...I will go back later and run another bad block check probably this week, but I wanted to get things moving along so the kids could start using deb jr, plus all the stuff at tux4kids and linuxforkids (most of which have .debs and there's a bunch of stuff in testing and unstable for deb jr because the metapackage barely made woody, much less all the stuff that was in process of packaging...no exceptions, everything has to go through the pools...the stuff in the pools is as good as the latest upstream source, plus built on debian's autobuilders for multiple arch ;-) anyhow...gdm was broke, so I went back and purged it (debian made me choose from xdm and kdm in the meantime, because it installs all three by default so you can choose easily) let it clear the downloads, then grabbed it back again...no TONK this time and gdm went through, configd itself off my previous xfree file that was created way way back at the beginnning of the install...

I'm looking at the start up wm chooser from gdm as we speak!

You also want to make sure that (you don'thave to reboot!) you take it down to single user mode or level 1, then bring it back up to level 3...use init s, then log in and check procs to see if a display manager is running...if you go ps -ef (the list should be small enough to fit on your screen) and you don't see k/x/gdm running, then go init 3 and watch it come on up. I might be sending the next post from there...I need to get the java and flash plugins tossed onto mozilla so it's ready for the kids....!

(c:

-rust

PS YEEHAW *sound of a mirror pond pale ale (http://www.deschutesbrewery.com) opening, soon to be followed by an obsidian stout*

PSS You have noticed that tux is holdin a brown carbonated beverage in the mini-splash screen at the top corner of the boot scroll? Good Penguin.

[RBUL]

beleive it or not I just went through all that waaaaaiiiitttiiinnnngggggggg aaaaarrrroooouuuunnnnddddd for a bad block check on this old 4G drive a friend gave me from work...I learned alot so far from trying to resussitate this thing......RedHat wouldn't install on it ...nor would winblows98se .....but I am booting into Debian 3.0 so far and think that the drive is sound......still no GUI....dselect is returning lots of error messages about not being able to connect to the download site.....but I see that Blackbox has been installed....and there is a file called XFree86 kicking around...however, every attempt to startx or apt-get install x-window-system is met with a big zero, I just get a return that sais "command not found" Very maddening.....I know it's in there.....don't understand a major step in the install process perhaps....me and about fifty zillion other newbies.........any more suggestions before I jump out the window holding my computer!