[svlug] tracking down some ppp utilities

[wayne@qconcepts.net]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> This is a very good point. If you are pulling things from the internet and
> want to package it all up nice and neat, then RPM is a good resource. But
> you need to make your own RPM's from sources or individually inspect each
> package for incompatiblilities. It's important to realize that RPM is just
> a generic packaging format. Any specific RPM must be completely customized
> to work with a specific file system architecture and other installation
> as well as run-time dependencies. It's actually quite simple to work with.
> But Red Hat has never put much effort into providing easy access to good
> documentation. They now claim to be updating the outdated book "Maximum
> RPM", which was quite informative a few years ago. This book has been
> available on the internet for several years, but Red Hat always makes it
> almost impossible to find it. Maybe things have changed.
> 
> <Insert Debian .deb alternative here. Possibly a better way to go.>

Ok. How's this?

Now...repeat after me....apt-get...apt-get...apt-get...

I am in the process of converting a 36-box production environment
(clusters of http and https, oh my!) from RedHat to Debian. My experience
with both distros has been good, but I find that Debian is much easier to
deal with from an administrative perspective. You can't get any easier
than:

apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade

If you insist on providing binary packages, I strongly suggest going with
Debian. Then, you only have to provide a bootable cdrom with the base
packages on it, and a script that the user can run once the box is
installed that will install the packages you require. As they are hosted
by Debian, this will ensure that your users will always have the latest
packages. This also makes it easier on you, as you will rarely have to
update this cdrom.

Couple of possible issues:

1. Not sure of the current state of kde and debian (I use the helixcode
gnome myself). 

2. Currently, the pine and mailx packages for woody are broken (Pine will
not compile, as it is distributed as a src-only package, and mailx is
missing entirely). A work around for the mailx package is to install the
.deb from potato, which works fine (mailx provides the 'mail' command,
which I find it pretty important for scripting purposes). I will be
submitting a bug report on both of these packages.

And before I hear the 'apt-get install mutt' response for the pine
problem, let me state that 1)I perfer pine over mutt (old habits die
hard), and 2)The boss wants pine ;-)

--
Wayne Earl <wayne at qconcepts.net>
http://www.qconcepts.net
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