Debian Tips
From BeSTGRID
Here are some tips on setting up a Debian Host.
Contents |
[edit] Helpful Remote Administration Software
Some extra packages were installed to help as the remote ssh session kept on disconnecting.
# aptitude install vim-nox screen less openssl
- vim-nox - friendly vi
- screen - tty virtual sessions that cope with ssh disconnections. See http://jmcpherson.org/screen.html
- less - a better pager than more
- openssl - shell utilities for manipulating and reading X509 Host certificates.
- lsof - displays information about files and FDs in an open state per process.
Nano was also removed as the default /usr/bin/editor, as it can be quite frustrating for Unix-philes.
# update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/vim.nox
[edit] Fixing VM images installed from debootstrap
Various things need to be done to make sure the machine image does not start requesting debconf settings latter on, and to set up the system for use withing NZ. Since we don't have multiple time zones here in NZ on BeSTGRID (unless we get server hosing in the Chatham Islands) most administrators expect the system to be operating in either NZST or NZDT by default the system level.
[edit] NZ Locale and Timezone
As this was missing, and creating LOTS of perl complaints about using the default locale, this was installed. This is typical of a system image created by using debootstrap
# aptitude install locales # dpkg-reconfigure locales
en_AU.ISO-8859-1, en_AU.UTF-8, en_CA.ISO-8859-1, en_CA.UTF-8, en_GB.ISO-8859-1, en_GB.ISO-8859-15, en_GB.UTF-8, en_IE.ISO-8859-1, en_IE@euro, en_IE.ISO-UTF-8 en_NZ.ISO-8859-1 en_NZ.UTF-8, en_US.ISO-8859-1, en_US.ISO-8859-15, en_US.UTF-8 locales were selected and generated, with the default system local being set to en_NZ.UTF-8 as per standard Debian and Ubuntu defaults. We tend to get a forest of locales used here depending on how people set up their PCs. All these are ones people here in NZ tend to use as they are either system install defaults, related to where they come from, or close to the NZ English idiom.
The final command above somehow manages to disconnect the ssh session. If and if this happens directly after doing the above do:
# locale-gen -a # update-locale
To check this, run perl and check that you get no output, and that perl can be closed with Ctrl-D.
To set the time zone correctly, do the following:
# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
Choose Pacific, then Auckland or Chatam as appropriate.
[edit] Grub2 debconf
This is specific to Debian Squeeze and later and Ubuntu systems.
This needs to be done, or the machine may become unbootable if grub2 is upgraded.
Do an fdisk -l as root to list partitions, and then dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
The grub-pc package is responsible for the debconf install settings, which are stored in </tt>/var/cache/debconf/config.dat</tt>, which is machine specific.
[edit] /etc/fstab
Debootstrap leaves /etc/fstab blank:
# UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM
A proper system install should leave it looking something like this:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/vda1 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/vda5 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
Copy and paste, and edit the above as needed for the system, again noting output from fdisk -l, as well as cat /proc/mounts.
[edit] Stopping Install of Recommended Software
A lot of software recommends other packages that tend to only be needed on desktop installations. These packages can consume hundreds of megabytes if not a gigabyte or so of disk.
Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf and add the following:
// No point in installing a lot of fat APT::Install-Recommends "0"; APT::Install-Suggests "0";
