The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ

May 31, 2022

The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
Published January 2021
Copyright © 1996-2021 Software in the Public Interest

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyrightnotice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this document under the conditions
for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms ofa permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this document into another language, under
the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be included intranslations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original English.

ii

Contents
1 Definitions and overview
1.1 What is this FAQ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 What is Debian GNU/Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 OK, now I know what Debian is... what is Linux?! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.4 Does Debian just do GNU/Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.5 What is the difference between Debian GNU/Linux and other Linux distributions? Why
should I choose Debian over some other distribution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.6 How does the Debian project fit in or compare with the Free Software Foundation’s GNU
project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.7 How does one pronounce Debian and what does this word mean? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1
1
1
2
2

2 Getting and installing Debian GNU/Linux
2.1 What is the latest version of Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
̀
2.2 Are there package upgrades in stable’?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Where/how can I get the Debian installation images? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 How do I install Debian from CD-ROMs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
̀
̀
2.5 Why does the official stable released CD-ROM contain symlinks for frozen’
and unstable’?
̀I thought this CD contains just stable’! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.6 Can I get and install Debian directly from a remote Internet site? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.7 Are there any alternative strategies for booting the system installer? . . . . . . . . . . . .

5
5
5
6
6

2
3
3

6
6
6

3 Choosing a Debian distribution
7
3.1 Which Debian distribution (stable/testing/unstable) is better for me? . . . . . . . . . . .
7
3.1.1 You asked me to install stable, but in stable so and so hardware is not detected/working. What should I do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
3.1.2 Will there be different versions of packages in different distributions? . . . . . . .
8
3.1.3 The stable distributions really contains outdated packages. Just look at Kde,
Gnome, Xorg or even the kernel. They are very old. Why is it so? . . . . . . . . .
8
3.1.4 If I were to decide to change to another distribution, can I do that? . . . . . . . .
8
3.1.5 Could you tell me whether to install stable, testing or unstable? . . . . . . . . . .
8
3.1.6 You are talking about testing being broken. What do you mean by that? . . . . . .
9
3.1.7 Why is it that testing could be broken for months? Won’t the fixes introduced in
unstable flow directly down into testing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
3.1.8 From an administrator’s point of view, which distribution requires more attention? 9
3.1.9 What happens when a new release is made? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.10 I have a working Desktop/cluster with Debian installed. How do I know which
distribution I am running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.11 I am currently tracking stable. Can I change to testing or unstable? If so, how? . . 11
3.1.12 I am currently tracking testing (bookworm). What will happen when a releaseis made? Will I still be tracking testing or will my machine be running the newstable distribution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.1.13 I am still confused. What did you say I should install? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2 But what about Knoppix, Linux Mint Debian Edition, Ubuntu, and others? . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2.1 I know that Knoppix/Linux Mint Debian Edition/Ubuntu/... is Debian-based. So
after installing it on the hard disk, can I use ’apt’ package tools on it? . . . . . . . 12
3.2.2 I installed Knoppix/Linux Mint Debian Edition/Ubuntu/... on my hard disk. Now
I have a problem. What should I do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2.3 I’m using Knoppix/LMDE/Ubuntu/... and now I want to use Debian. How do I
migrate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
iii

CONTENTS
4 Compatibility issues
4.1 On what hardware architectures/systems does Debian GNU/Linux run? . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 What kernels does Debian GNU/Linux run? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 How compatible is Debian with other distributions of Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4 How source code compatible is Debian with other Unix systems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.5 Can I use Debian packages (”.deb” files) on my Red Hat/Slackware/... Linux system? Can
I use Red Hat packages (”.rpm” files) on my Debian GNU/Linux system? . . . . . . . . . .
4.6 How should I install a non-Debian program? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13
13
14
14
14
15
15

5 Software available in the Debian system
17
5.1 What types of applications and development software are available for Debian GNU/Linux? 17
5.2 Who wrote all that software? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3 How can I get a current list of programs that have been packaged for Debian? . . . . . . 17
5.4 How can I install a developer’s environment to build packages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.5 What is missing from Debian GNU/Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.6 Why do I get ”ld: cannot find -lfoo” messages when compiling programs? Why aren’t
there any libfoo.so files in Debian library packages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.7 (How) Does Debian support Java? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.8 How can I check that I am using a Debian system, and what version it is? . . . . . . . . . 18
5.9 How does Debian support non-English languages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.10 Where is ezmlm/djbdns/qmail? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.11 Where is a player for Flash (SWF)? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.12 Where is Google Earth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.13 Where is VoIP software? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.14 I have a wireless network card which doesn’t work with Linux. What should I do? . . . . 20
6 The Debian archives
6.1 How many Debian distributions are there? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 What are all those names like etch, lenny, etc.? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.1 Which other codenames have been used in the past? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.2 Where do these codenames come from? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3 What about ”sid”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.4 What does the stable directory contain? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.5 What does the testing distribution contain? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
̀
6.5.1 What about ”testing”? How is it frozen’?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.6 What does the unstable distribution contain? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.7 What are all those directories at the Debian archives? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.8 What are all those directories inside dists/stable/main? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.9 Where is the source code? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.10 What’s in the pool directory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.11 What is ”incoming”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.12 How do I set up my own apt-able repository? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21
21
21
21
21
22
22
23
23
23
24
24
24
24
25
25

7 Basics of the Debian package management system
7.1 What is a Debian package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2 What is the format of a Debian binary package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3 Why are Debian package file names so long? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4 What is a Debian control file? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.5 What is a Debian conffile? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.6 What is a Debian preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm script? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.7 What is an Essential, Required, Important, Standard, Optional, or Extra package? . . . . . .
7.8 What is a Virtual Package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.9 What is meant by saying that a package Depends, Recommends, Suggests, Conflicts, Replaces,
Breaks or Provides another package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.10 What is meant by Pre-Depends? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.11 What is meant by unknown, install, remove, purge and hold in the package status? . . . . .
7.12 How do I put a package on hold? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.13 How do I install a source package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.14 How do I build binary packages from a source package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27
27
27
28
28
29
29
30
30

iv

31
31
31
32
32
33

CONTENTS
7.15 How do I create Debian packages myself? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
8 The Debian package management tools
8.1 What programs does Debian provide for managing its packages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.1 dpkg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.2 APT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.3 aptitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.4 synaptic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.5 tasksel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.6 Other package management tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.6.1 dpkg-deb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2 Debian claims to be able to update a running program; how is this accomplished? . . . .
8.3 How can I tell what packages are already installed on a Debian system? . . . . . . . . . .
8.4 How do I display the files of an installed package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.5 How can I find out what package produced a particular file? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
̀
̀
8.6 Why is foo-data’
not removed when I uninstall foo’?
How do I make sure old unused
library-packages get purged? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35
35
35
36
37
38
38
38
38
38
39
39
39

9 Keeping your Debian system up-to-date
9.1 How can I keep my Debian system current? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1.1 aptitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1.2 apt-get and apt-cdrom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.2 Must I go into single user mode in order to upgrade a package? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.3 Do I have to keep all those .deb archive files on my disk? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.4 How can I keep a log of the packages I added to the system? I’d like to know whenupgrades and removals have occurred and on which packages! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.5 Can I automatically update the system? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.6 I have several machines; how can I download the updates only one time? . . . . . . . . .

41
41
41
42
42
42

10 Debian and the kernel
10.1 Can I install and compile a kernel without some Debian-specific tweaking? . . . . . . . .
10.2 What tools does Debian provide to build custom kernels? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3 What special provisions does Debian provide to deal with modules? . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.4 Can I safely de-install an old kernel package, and if so, how? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.5 Where can I get more information about Linux packages for Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . .

45
45
45
45
45
46

11 Customizing your Debian GNU/Linux system
11.1 How can I ensure that all programs use the same paper size? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.2 How can I provide access to hardware peripherals, without compromising security? . . .
11.3 How do I load a console font on startup the Debian way? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.4 How can I configure an X11 program’s application defaults? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.5 How does a Debian system boot? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.6 And how about Debian and traditional System V init? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.7 And are there yet other ways of booting a Debian system? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.8 How does the package management system deal with packages that contain configuration
files for other packages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.9 How do I override a file installed by a package, so that a different version can be usedinstead? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.10How can I have my locally-built package included in the list of available packages thatthe package management system knows about? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.11Some users like mawk, others like gawk; some like vim, others like elvis; some like trn,others like tin; how does Debian support diversity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47
47
47
47
47
47
48
49

12 Getting support for Debian GNU/Linux12.1 What other documentation exists on and for a Debian system? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2 Are there any on-line resources for discussing Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2.1 Mailing lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2.1.1 What is the code of conduct for the mailing lists? . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2.2 Web forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53
53
54
54
54
55

v

40

42
43
43

49
49
50
50

CONTENTS
12.2.3 Wiki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2.4 Maintainers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2.5 Usenet newsgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.3 Is there a quick way to search for information on Debian GNU/Linux? . . . . . . . . . . .
12.4 Are there logs of known bugs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.5 How do I report a bug in Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55
55
55
55
55
56

13 Contributing to the Debian Project13.1 How can I become a Debian member/Debian developer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.2 How can I contribute resources to the Debian project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3 How can I contribute financially to the Debian project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3.1 Software in the Public Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3.2 Other organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57
57
57
57
57
58

14 Redistributing Debian GNU/Linux in a commercial product14.1 Can I make and sell Debian CDs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14.2 Can Debian be packaged with non-free software? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14.3 I am making a special Linux distribution for a ”vertical market”. Can I use Debian
GNU/Linux for the guts of a Linux system and add my own applications on top of it? . .
14.4 Can I put my commercial program in a Debian ”package” so that it installs effortlessly on
any Debian system? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59
59
59

15 Changes expected in the next major release of Debian15.1 Hardening the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.2 Extended support for non-English users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.3 Improvements in the Debian Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.4 More architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.5 More kernels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61
61
61
62
62
62

16 General information about the FAQ
16.1 Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16.2 Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16.3 Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16.4 Document format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63
63
63
63
64

Index

59
60

65

vi

Abstract
This document answers questions frequently asked about Debian GNU/Linux.

Chapter 1

Definitions and overview
1.1

What is this FAQ?

This document gives frequently asked questions (with their answers!) about the Debian distribution(Debian GNU/Linux and others) and about the Debian project. If applicable, pointers to other documentation will be given: we won’t quote large parts of external documentation in this document. You’ll
find out that some answers assume some knowledge of Unix-like operating systems. We’ll try to assume
as little prior knowledge as possible: answers to general beginners questions will be kept simple.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for in this FAQ, be sure to check out Section 12.1. If even that
doesn’t help, refer to Section 16.2.

1.2

What is Debian GNU/Linux?

Debian GNU/Linux is a particular distribution of the Linux operating system, and numerous packages
that run on it.
Debian GNU/Linux is:• full featured: Debian includes more than 59100 software packages at present. Users can select which packages to install; Debian provides a tool for this purpose. You can find a list
and descriptions of the packages currently available in Debian at any of the Debian mirror sites(https://www.debian.org/distrib/ftplist).
• free to use and redistribute: There is no consortium membership or payment required to participate in its distribution and development. All packages that are formally part of Debian GNU/Linuxare free to redistribute, usually under terms specified by the GNU General Public License.
The Debian archives also carry approximately 1000 software packages (in the non-free andcontrib sections), which are distributable under specific terms included with each package.

• dynamic: With about 1012 volunteers constantly contributing new and improved code, Debian
is evolving rapidly. The archives are updated twice every day.
Most Linux users run a specific distribution of Linux, like Debian GNU/Linux. However, in principle,
users could obtain the Linux kernel via the Internet or from elsewhere, and compile it themselves. They
could then obtain source code for many applications in the same way, compile the programs, then installthem into their systems. For complicated programs, this process can be not only time-consuming but
error-prone. To avoid it, users often choose to obtain the operating system and the application packages
from one of the Linux distributors. What distinguishes the various Linux distributors are the software,
protocols, and practices they use for packaging, installing, and tracking applications packages on users’
systems, combined with installation and maintenance tools, documentation, and other services.
Debian GNU/Linux is the result of a volunteer effort to create a free, high-quality Unix-compatible
operating system, complete with a suite of applications. The idea of a free Unix-like system originatesfrom the GNU project, and many of the applications that make Debian GNU/Linux so useful were developed by the GNU project.
For Debian, free has the GNUish meaning (see the Debian Free Software Guidelines (https://www.
debian.org/social_contract#guidelines)). When we speak of free software, we are referring
1

CHAPTER 1. DEFINITIONS AND OVERVIEW

1.3. OK, NOW I KNOW WHAT DEBIAN IS... …

to freedom, not price. Free software means that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free
software, that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software oruse pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
The Debian Project was created by Ian Murdock in 1993, initially under the sponsorship of the Free
Software Foundation’s GNU project. Today, Debian’s developers think of it as a direct descendent of the
GNU project.
Although Debian GNU/Linux itself is free software, it is a base upon which value-added Linux distributions can be built. By providing a reliable, full-featured base system, Debian provides Linux users
with increased compatibility, and allows Linux distribution creators to eliminate duplication of effort
and focus on the things that make their distribution special. See Section 14.3 for more information.

1.3 OK, now I know what Debian is... what is Linux?!
In short, Linux is the kernel of a Unix-like operating system. It was originally designed for 386 (andbetter) PCs; today Linux also runs on a dozen of other systems. Linux is written by Linus Torvalds andmany computer scientists around the world.
Besides its kernel, a ”Linux” system usually has:
• a file system that follows the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard https://www.pathname.
com/fhs.
• a wide range of Unix utilities, many of which have been developed by the GNU project and theFree Software Foundation.
The combination of the Linux kernel, the file system, the GNU and FSF utilities, and the other utilities
are designed to achieve compliance with the POSIX (IEEE 1003.1) standard; see Section 4.4.
For more information about Linux, see What is Linux (https://www.linux.org/info/) by Linux
Online (https://www.linux.org/).

1.4 Does Debian just do GNU/Linux?
Currently, Debian is only available for Linux, but with Debian GNU/Hurd and Debian on BSD kernels,
we have started to offer non-Linux-based OSes as a development, server and desktop platform, too.
However, these non-linux ports are not officially released yet.
The oldest porting effort is Debian GNU/Hurd.
The Hurd is a set of servers running on top of the GNU Mach microkernel. Together they build thebase for the GNU operating system.
Please see https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd for more information about the GNU/Hurdin general, and https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/ for more information about Debian GNU/Hurd.
A second effort is the port to a BSD kernel. People are working with the FreeBSD kernel.
See https://www.debian.org/ports/#nonlinux for more information about these non-linux
ports.

1.5 What is the difference between Debian GNU/Linux and otherLinux distributions? Why should I choose Debian over someother distribution?
These key features distinguish Debian from other Linux distributions:
Freedom: As stated in the Debian Social Contract (https://www.debian.org/social_contract),
Debian will remain 100% free. Debian is very strict about shipping truly free software. The guidelines used to determine if a work is ”free” are provided in The Debian Free Software Guidelines(DFSG) (https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines).
The Debian package maintenance system: The entire system, or any individual component of it, canbe upgraded in place without reformatting, without losing custom configuration files, and (in mostcases) without rebooting the system. Most Linux distributions available today have some kind of2

CHAPTER 1. DEFINITIONS AND OVERVIEW

1.6. HOW DOES THE DEBIAN PROJECT FIT IN …

package maintenance system; the Debian package maintenance system is unique and particularlyrobust (see Chapter 7).
Open development: Whereas many other Linux distributions are developed by individuals, small,closed groups, or commercial vendors, Debian is a major Linux distribution that is being developedby an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system,in the same spirit as Linux and other free software.

More than 1012 volunteer package maintainers are working on over 59100 packages and improving Debian GNU/Linux. The Debian developers contribute to the project not by writing new
applications (in most cases), but by packaging existing software according to the standards of the
project, by communicating bug reports to upstream developers, and by providing user support.
See also additional information on how to become a contributor in Chapter 13.

The Universal Operating System: Debian comes with more than 59100 packages (https://packages.
debian.org/stable/) and runs on 9 architectures (https://www.debian.org/ports/).
This is far more than is available for any other GNU/Linux distribution. See Section 5.1 for an
overview of the provided software and see Section 4.1 for a description of the supported hardware
platforms.
The Bug Tracking System: The geographical dispersion of the Debian developers required sophisticated tools and quick communication of bugs and bug-fixes to accelerate the development of thesystem. Users are encouraged to send bugs in a formal style, which are quickly accessible by WWW
archives or via e-mail. See additional information in this FAQ on the management of the bug log
in Section 12.4.
The Debian Policy: Debian has an extensive specification of our standards of quality, the Debian Policy. This document defines the qualities and standards to which we hold Debian packages.
For additional information about this, please see our web page about reasons to choose Debian(https://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian).

1.6

How does the Debian project fit in or compare with the Free
Software Foundation’s GNU project?

The Debian system builds on the ideals of free software first championed by the Free Software Foundation (https://www.gnu.org/) and in particular by Richard Stallman (https://www.stallman.
org/). FSF’s powerful system development tools, utilities, and applications are also a key part of the
Debian system.
The Debian Project is a separate entity from the FSF, however we communicate regularly and cooperate on various projects. The FSF explicitly requested that we call our system ”Debian GNU/Linux”,
and we are happy to comply with that request.
The FSF’s long-standing objective is to develop a new operating system called GNU, based on Hurd
(https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd). Debian is working with FSF on this system, called Debian GNU/Hurd (https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/).

1.7

How does one pronounce Debian and what does this wordmean?

The project name is pronounced Deb’-ee-en, with a short e in Deb, and emphasis on the first syllable. This
word is a contraction of the names of Debra and Ian Murdock, who founded the project. (Dictionaries
seem to offer some ambiguity in the pronunciation of Ian (!), but Ian prefers ee’-en.)

3Chapter 2

Getting and installing Debian
GNU/Linux
The official document giving installation instructions is the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide (https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual). We’ll give some additional notes about
getting and installing Debian GNU/Linux here.

2.1

What is the latest version of Debian?

Currently there are three versions of Debian GNU/Linux:̀release 11, a.k.a. the stable’
distribution or bullseye This is stable and well tested software, it changes
if major security or usability fixes are incorporated.
̀
the testing’
distribution, currently called bookworm This is where packages that will be released as̀the next stable’
are placed; they’ve had some testing in unstable but they may not be completelỳbut not more often thanfit for release yet. This distribution is updated more often than stable’,̀unstable’.
̀the unstable’
distribution This is the version currently under development; it is updated continuously.
̀
You can retrieve packages from the unstable’archive on any Debian mirror site and use them toupgrade your system at any time, but you may not expect the system to be as usable or as stablèas before - that’s why it’s called unstable’!
Please see Section 6.1 for more information.

2.2

̀Are there package upgrades in stable’?

̀No new functionality is added to the stable release. Once a Debian version is released and tagged stable’
it will only get security updates. That is, only packages for which a security vulnerability has been foundafter the release will be upgraded. All the security updates are served through security.debian.org(https://security.debian.org).
Security updates serve one purpose: to supply a fix for a security vulnerability. They are not amethod for sneaking additional changes into the stable release without going through normal point
release procedure. Consequently, fixes for packages with security issues will not upgrade the software.
The Debian Security Team will backport the necessary fixes to the version of the software distributed iǹstable’instead.
For more information related to security support please read the Security FAQ (https://www.
debian.org/security/faq) or the Debian Security Manual (https://www.debian.org/doc/
manuals/securing-debian-howto/).
5

CHAPTER 2. GETTING AND INSTALLING …

2.3. WHERE/HOW CAN I GET THE DEBIAN …

2.3 Where/how can I get the Debian installation images?
You can get the installation images by downloading the appropriate files from the Debian website(https://www.debian.org/distrib/).
Please refer to Debian GNU/Linux on CDs (https://www.debian.org/CD) for more information
about CD (and DVD) images.

2.4 How do I install Debian from CD-ROMs?
Installing Debian from CD is straightforward: configure your system for booting off a CD, insert yourCD, and reboot. Your system will now be running the Debian Installer. See the Debian GNU/Linux
Installation Guide (https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual) for more information.

2.5 Why does the official stable released CD-ROM contain sym̀̀links for frozen’
and unstable’?
I thought this CD contains
̀just stable’!
Official Debian CD images indeed contain symlinks like:/dists/frozen -> bullseye//dists/stable -> bullseye//dists/testing -> bullseye//dists/unstable -> bullseye/so that they work when your sources.list has an entry likedeb cdrom:[<name as on cd label>]/ unstable main [...].
̀̀
The fact these symlinks are present does not mean the image is unstable’or testing’or anything.
Read the CD label in /.disk/info to find out which Debian version it contains. This information is
also present in /README.txt on the CD.
̀̀Read https://www.debian.org/releases to find out what the current stable’
and testing’releases are.

2.6 Can I get and install Debian directly from a remote Internetsite?
Yes. You can boot the Debian installation system from a set of files you can download from our archivesite and its mirrors.
You can download a small CD image file, create a bootable CD from it, install the basic system fromit and the rest over the network. For more information please see https://www.debian.org/CD/
netinst/.

2.7 Are there any alternative strategies for booting the system installer?
Yes. Apart from CD or DVD, you can install Debian GNU/Linux by booting from USB memory stick,directly from hard disk, or using TFTP net booting. For installing on multiple computers it’s possible to
do fully automatic installations. NB: not all methods are supported by all computer architectures. Oncethe installer has booted, the rest of the system can be downloaded over the network, or installed fromlocal media. See the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide (https://www.debian.org/releases/
stable/installmanual) for more information.

6

Chapter 3

Choosing a Debian distribution
There are many different Debian distributions. Choosing the proper Debian distribution is an important
decision. This section covers some information useful for users that want to make the choice best suitedfor their system and also answers possible questions that might be arising during the process. It does
not deal with ”why you should choose Debian” but rather ”which distribution of Debian”.
For more information on the available distributions read Section 6.1.

3.1

Which Debian distribution (stable/testing/unstable) is better
for me?

The answer is a bit complicated. It really depends on what you intend to do. One solution would be to
ask a friend who runs Debian. But that does not mean that you cannot make an independent decision.
In fact, you should be able to decide once you complete reading this chapter.
• If security or stability are at all important for you: install stable. period. This is the most preferredway.
• If you are a new user installing to a desktop machine, start with stable. Some of the software
is quite old, but it’s the least buggy environment to work in. You can easily switch to the more
modern unstable (or testing) once you are a little more confident.
• If you are a desktop user with a lot of experience in the operating system and do not mind facing
the odd bug now and then, or even full system breakage, use unstable. It has all the latest andgreatest software, and bugs are usually fixed swiftly.
• If you are running a server, especially one that has strong stability requirements or is exposed to
the Internet, install stable. This is by far the strongest and safest choice.
The following questions (hopefully) provide more detail on these choices. After reading this whole
FAQ, if you still could not make a decision, stick with the stable distribution.

3.1.1

You asked me to install stable, but in stable so and so hardware is notdetected/working. What should I do?

Try to search the web using a search engine and see if someone else is able to get it working in stable.
Most of the hardware should work fine with stable. But if you have some state-of-the-art, cutting edge
hardware, it might not work with stable. If this is the case, you might want to install/upgrade to either
testing or unstable.
For laptops, https://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ is a very good website to see if someone
else is able to get it to work under Linux. The website is not specific to Debian, but is nevertheless atremendous resource. I am not aware of any such website for desktops.
Another option would be to ask in the debian-user mailing list by sending an email to debianuser@lists.debian.org. Messages can be posted to the list even without subscribing. The archives can beread through https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/. Information regarding subscribing to
the list can be found at the location of archives. You are strongly encouraged to post your questions on
7

CHAPTER 3. CHOOSING A DEBIAN …

3.1. WHICH DEBIAN DISTRIBUTION …

the mailing-list rather than on irc (https://www.debian.org/support). The mailing-list messages
are archived, so the solution to your problem can help others with the same issue.

3.1.2 Will there be different versions of packages in different distributions?
Yes. Unstable has the most recent (latest) versions. But the packages in unstable are not well tested andmight have bugs.
On the other hand, stable contains old versions of packages. But this package is well tested and isless likely to have any bugs.
The packages in testing fall between these two extremes.

3.1.3 The stable distributions really contains outdated packages. Just look atKde, Gnome, Xorg or even the kernel. They are very old. Why is it so?
Well, you might be correct. The age of the packages at stable depends on when the last release was made.
Since there is typically over 1 year between releases you might find that stable contains old versions of
packages. However, they have been tested in and out. One can confidently say that the packages do nothave any known severe bugs, security holes etc., in them. The packages in stable integrate seamlessly
with other stable packages. These characteristics are very important for production servers which haveto work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
On the other hand, packages in testing or unstable can have hidden bugs, security holes etc. Moreover, some packages in testing and unstable might not be working as intended. Usually people working
on a single desktop prefer having the latest and most modern set of packages. Unstable is the solution
for this group of people.
As you can see, stability and novelty are two opposing ends of the spectrum. If stability is required:install stable distribution. If you want to work with the latest packages, then install unstable.

3.1.4 If I were to decide to change to another distribution, can I do that?
Yes, but it is a one way process. You can go from stable --> testing --> unstable. But the reverse
direction is not ”possible”. So better be sure if you are planning to install/upgrade to unstable.
Actually, if you are an expert and if you are willing to spend some time and if you are real careful
and if you know what you are doing, then it might be possible to go from unstable to testing and thento stable. The installer scripts are not designed to do that. So in the process, your configuration files
might be lost and...

3.1.5 Could you tell me whether to install stable, testing or unstable?
No. This is a rather subjective issue. There is no perfect answer as it depends on your software needs,
your willingness to deal with possible breakage, and your experience in system administration. Hereare some tips:• Stable is rock solid. It does not break and has full security support. But it not might have support
for the latest hardware.
• Testing has more up-to-date software than Stable, and it breaks less often than Unstable. But whenit breaks, it might take a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it
could be months at times. It also does not have permanent security support.
• Unstable has the latest software and changes a lot. Consequently, it can break at any point.
However, fixes get rectified in many occasions in a couple of days and it always has the latest
releases of software packaged for Debian.
When deciding between testing and unstable bear in mind that there might be times when tracking
testing would be beneficial as opposed to unstable. One of this document’s authors experienced suchsituation due to the gcc transition from gcc3 to gcc4. He was trying to install the labplot package ona machine tracking unstable and it could not be installed in unstable as some of its dependencies haveundergone gcc4 transition and some have not. But the package in testing was installable on a testingmachine as the gcc4 transitioned packages had not ”trickled down” to testing.
8CHAPTER 3. CHOOSING A DEBIAN …

3.1.6

3.1. WHICH DEBIAN DISTRIBUTION …

You are talking about testing being broken. What do you mean by that?

Sometimes, a package might not be installable through package management tools. Sometimes, a package might not be available at all, maybe it was (temporarily) removed due to bugs or unmet dependencies. Sometimes, a package installs but does not behave in the proper way.
When these things happen, the distribution is said to be broken (at least for this package).

3.1.7

Why is it that testing could be broken for months? Won’t the fixes introduced in unstable flow directly down into testing?

The bug fixes and improvements introduced in the unstable distribution trickle down to testing after
a certain number of days. Let’s say this threshold is 5 days. The packages in unstable go into testing
only when there are no RC-bugs reported against them. If there is a RC-bug filed against a package inunstable, it will not go into testing after the 5 days.
The idea is that, if the package has any problems, it would be discovered by people using unstable
and will be fixed before it enters testing. This keeps testing in a usable state for most of the time. Overalla brilliant concept, if you ask me. But things aren’t always that simple. Consider the following situation:• Imagine you are interested in package XYZ.
• Let’s assume that on June 10, the version in testing is XYZ-3.6 and in unstable it is XYZ-3.7.
• After 5 days, XYZ-3.7 from unstable migrates into testing.
• So on June 15, both testing and unstable have XYZ-3.7 in their repositories.
• Let’s say, the user of testing distribution sees that a new XYZ package is available and updates the
XYZ-3.6 to XYZ-3.7.
• Now on June 25, someone using testing or unstable discovers an RC bug in XYZ-3.7 and files it in
the BTS.
• The maintainer of XYZ fixes this bug and uploads it to unstable say on June 30. Here it is assumed
that it takes 5 days for the maintainer to fix the bug and upload the new version. The number 5
should not be taken literally. It could be less or more, depending upon the severity of the RC-bug
at hand.
• This new version in unstable, XYZ-3.8 is scheduled to enter testing on July 5th.
• But on July 3rd some other person discovers another RC-bug in XYZ-3.8.
• Let’s say the maintainer of XYZ fixes this new RC-bug and uploads new version of XYZ after 5
days.
• So on July 8th, testing has XYZ-3.7 while unstable has XYZ-3.9.
• This new version XYZ-3.9 is now rescheduled to enter testing on July 13th.
• Now since you are running testing, and since XYZ-3.7 is buggy, you could probably use XYZ only
after July 13th. That is you essentially ended up with a broken XYZ for about one month.
The situation can get much more complicated, if say, XYZ depends on 4 other packages. This couldin turn lead to an unusable testing distribution for months. While the scenario above is immaginary,
similar things can occur in real life, though they are rare.

3.1.8

From an administrator’s point of view, which distribution requires more
attention?

One of the main reasons why many people choose Debian over other Linux distributions is that it requiresvery little administration. People want a system that just works. In general one can say that stable
requires very little maintenance, while testing and unstable require constant maintenance from theadministrator. If you are running stable, all you need to worry about is keeping track of security updates.
If you are running either testing or unstable it is a good idea to be aware of the new bugs discovered in
the installed packages, new bugfixes/features introduced etc.
9

CHAPTER 3. CHOOSING A DEBIAN …

3.1. WHICH DEBIAN DISTRIBUTION …

3.1.9 What happens when a new release is made?
This question will not help you in choosing a Debian distribution. But sooner or later you will face thisquestion.
The stable distribution is currently bullseye; The next stable distribution will be called bookworm.
Let’s consider the particular case of what happens when bookworm is released as the new stable version.
• oldstable = buster; stable = bullseye; testing = bookworm; unstable = sid• Unstable is always referred to as sid irrespective of whether a release is made or not.
• Packages constantly migrate from sid to testing (i.e. bookworm). But packages in stable (i.e.
bullseye) remain the same except for security updates.
• After some time testing becomes frozen. But it will still be called testing. At this point no new
packages from unstable can migrate to testing unless they include release-critical (RC) bug fixes.
• When testing is frozen, all the new bugfixes introduced have to be manually checked by the members of the release team. This is done to ensure that there won’t be any unknown severe problems
in the frozen testing.
• RC bugs in ’frozen testing’ are reduced to either zero or, if greater than zero, the bugs are either
marked as ignored for the release or are deferred for a point release.
• The ’frozen testing’ with no rc-bugs will be released as the new stable version. In our example,
this new stable release will be called bookworm.
• At this stage oldstable = bullseye, stable = bookworm. The contents of stable and ’frozen testing’are same at this point.
• A new testing is based on the old testing.
• Packages start coming down from sid to testing and the Debian community will be working towards
making the next stable release.

3.1.10 I have a working Desktop/cluster with Debian installed. How do I know
which distribution I am running?
In most situations it is very easy to figure this out. Take a look at the /etc/apt/sources.list file.
There will be an entry similar to this:deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib

The third field (’unstable’ in the above example) indicates the Debian distribution the system iscurrently tracking.
You can also use lsb_release (available in the lsb-release package). If you run this program in
an unstable system you will get:$ lsb_release -a
LSB Version:
core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-noarch:core-2.0-ia32: ←core-3.0-ia32:core-3.1-ia32
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:
Debian GNU/Linux unstable (sid)Release:unstable
Codename:sid

However, this is not always that easy. Some systems might have sources.list files with multiple
entries corresponding to different distributions. This could happen if the administrator is tracking different packages from different Debian distributions. This is frequently referred to as apt-pinning. Thesesystems might run a mixture of distributions.
10CHAPTER 3. CHOOSING A DEBIAN …

3.1.113.2. BUT WHAT ABOUT KNOPPIX, LINUX …

I am currently tracking stable. Can I change to testing or unstable? If
so, how?

If you are currently running stable, then in the /etc/apt/sources.list file the third field will beeither ’bullseye’ or ’stable’. You need to change this to the distribution you want to run. If you want to
run testing, then change the third field of /etc/apt/sources.list to ’testing’. If you want to run
unstable, then change the third field to ’unstable’.
Currently testing is called bookworm. So, if you change the third field of /etc/apt/sources.list
to ’bookworm’, then also you will be running testing. But even when bookworm becomes stable, youwill still be tracking bookworm.
Unstable is always called Sid. So if you change the third field of /etc/apt/sources.list to ’sid’,
then you will be tracking unstable.
Currently Debian offers security updates for testing but not for unstable, as fixes in unstable are
directly made to the main archive. So if you are running unstable make sure that you remove the lines
relating to security updates in /etc/apt/sources.list.
If there is a release notes document available for the distribution you are upgrading to (even though
it has not yet been released) it would be wise to review it, as it might provide information on how you
should upgrade to it.
Nevertheless, once you make the above changes, you can run aptitudeupdate and then install
the packages that you want. Notice that installing a package from a different distribution might automatically upgrade half of your system. If you install individual packages you will end up with a systemrunning mixed distributions.
It might be best in some situations to just fully upgrade to the new distribution running apt fullupgrade, aptitude safe-upgrade or aptitude full-upgrade. Read apt’s and aptitude’s manual pages
for more information.

3.1.12I am currently tracking testing (bookworm). What will happen when arelease is made? Will I still be tracking testing or will my machine berunning the new stable distribution?

It depends on the entries in the /etc/apt/sources.list file. If you are currently tracking testing,these entries are similar to either:deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing mainor
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main

If the third field in /etc/apt/sources.list is ’testing’ then you will be tracking testing evenafter a release is made. So after bookworm is released, you will be running a new Debian distribution
which will have a different codename. Changes might not be apparent at first but will be evident assoon as new packages from unstable go over to the testing distribution.
But if the third field contains ’bookworm’ then you will be tracking stable (since bookworm will thenbe the new stable distribution).

3.1.13I am still confused. What did you say I should install?

If unsure, the best bet would be the stable distribution.

3.2

But what about Knoppix, Linux Mint Debian Edition, Ubuntu,
and others?

They are not Debian; they are Debian based. Though there are many similarities and commonalities
between them, there are also crucial differences.
All these distributions have their own merits and are suited to some specific set of users. For
more information, read Software distributions based on Debian (https://www.debian.org/misc/children-distros) available at the Debian website.
11

CHAPTER 3. CHOOSING A DEBIAN …

3.2. BUT WHAT ABOUT KNOPPIX, LINUX …

3.2.1 I know that Knoppix/Linux Mint Debian Edition/Ubuntu/... is Debianbased. So after installing it on the hard disk, can I use ’apt’ package tools
on it?
These distributions are Debian based. But they are not Debian. You will be still able to use apt package
tools by pointing the /etc/apt/sources.list file to these distributions’ repositories. But then you
are not running Debian, you are running a different distribution. They are not the same.
In most situations if you stick with one distribution you should use that and not mix packages fromother distributions. Many common breakages arise due to people running a distribution and trying toinstall Debian packages from other distributions. The fact that they use the same formatting and name(.deb), does not make them immediately compatible.
For example, Knoppix is a Linux distribution designed to be booted as a live CD whereas Debian isdesigned to be installed on the hard-disk. Knoppix is great if you want to know whether a particularpiece of hardware works, or if you want to experience how a GNU/Linux system ’feels’ etc., Knoppix
is good for demonstration purposes while Debian is designed to run 24/7. Moreover the number ofpackages available, the number of architectures supported by Debian are far more than that of Knoppix.
If you want Debian, it is best to install Debian from the get-go. Although it is possible to install Debianthrough other distributions, such as Knoppix, the procedure calls for expertise. If you are reading thisFAQ, I would assume that you are new to both Debian and Knoppix. In that case, save yourself a lot of
trouble later and install Debian right at the beginning.

3.2.2 I installed Knoppix/Linux Mint Debian Edition/Ubuntu/... on my harddisk. Now I have a problem. What should I do?
You are advised not to use the Debian forums (either mailing lists or IRC) for help as people there maybase their suggestions on the assumption that you are running a Debian system. These ”fixes” might not
be suited to what you are running, and might even make your problem worse.
Use the forums of the specific distribution you are using first. If you do not get help or the help you
get does not fix your problem you might want to try asking in Debian forums, but keep the advice ofthe previous paragraph in mind.

3.2.3 I’m using Knoppix/LMDE/Ubuntu/... and now I want to use Debian. How
do I migrate?
Consider the change from a Debian-based distribution to Debian just like a change from one operating
system to another one. You should make a backup of all your data and reinstall the operating systemfrom scratch. You should not attempt to ”upgrade” to Debian using the package management tools as
you might end up with an unusable system.
If all your user data (i.e. your /home) is under a separate partition migrating to Debian is actuallyquite simple, you just have to tell the installation system to mount (but not reformat) that partition
when reinstalling. Making backups of your data, as well as your previous system’s configuration (i.e.
/etc/ and, maybe, /var/) is still encouraged.

12Chapter 4

Compatibility issues
4.1

On what hardware architectures/systems does Debian GNU/Linuxrun?

Debian GNU/Linux includes complete source-code for all of the included programs, so it should workon all systems which are supported by the Linux kernel; see the Linux FAQ (http://en.tldp.org/
FAQ/Linux-FAQ/intro.html#DOES-LINUX-RUN-ON-MY-COMPUTER) for details.
The current Debian GNU/Linux release, 11, contains a complete, binary distribution for the following
architectures:• amd64: this covers systems based on AMD 64bit CPUs with AMD64 extension and all Intel CPUs
with EM64T extension, and a common 64bit userspace.
• arm64: supports the latest 64-bit ARM-powered devices.
• armel: little-endian ARM machines.
• armhf : an alternative to armel for ARMv7 machines with hard-float.
• i386: this covers systems based on Intel and compatible processors, including Intel’s 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II (both Klamath and Celeron), and Pentium III, and most compatible
processors by AMD, Cyrix and others.
• ia64: Intel IA-64 (”Itanium”) computers.
• mips: SGI’s big-endian MIPS systems, Indy and Indigo2; mipsel: little-endian MIPS machines, Digital DECstations.
• powerpc: this covers some IBM/Motorola PowerPC machines, including the Apple Macintosh PowerMac models, and the CHRP and PReP open architecture machines.
• ppc64el: 64-bit little-endian PowerPC port, supports several recent PowerPC/POWER processors.
• s390x: 64-bit port for IBM System z machines, replaced s390.
The development of binary distributions of Debian for hurd-i386 (for GNU Hurd kernel on i386 32bit PCs), mipsel64 (for 64 bit MIPS in little-endian mode), powerpcspe (port for the ”Signal Processing
Engine” hardware), sparc64 (for 64 bit SPARC processors), sh (for Hitachi SuperH processors), and x32(for amd64/x86_64 CPUs using 32-bit pointers) is currently underway.
Support for the m68k architecture was dropped in the Etch (Debian 4.0) release, because it did
not meet the criteria set by the Debian Release Managers. This architecture covers Amigas and ATARIs
having a Motorola 680x0 processor for x>=2; with MMU. However, the port is still active and available
for installation even if not a part of this official stable release and might be reactivated for future releases.
Support for the hppa (Hewlett-Packard’s PA-RISC machines) and alpha (Compaq/Digital’s Alpha systems) were dropped in the Squeeze (Debian 6.0) release for similar reasons. The arm was dropped tooin this release, as it was superseded by the armel architecture.
13

CHAPTER 4. COMPATIBILITY ISSUES

4.2. WHAT KERNELS DOES DEBIAN …

Support for the 32-bit s390 port (s390) was discontinued and replaced with s390x in Jessie (Debian8). In addition, the ports to IA-64 and Sparc had to be removed from this release due to insufficientdeveloper support.
For more information on the available ports see the ports pages at the website (https://www.
debian.org/ports/).
For further information on booting, partitioning your drive, enabling PCMCIA (PC Card) devices andsimilar issues please follow the instructions given in the Installation Manual, which is available fromour WWW site at https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual.

4.2 What kernels does Debian GNU/Linux run?
Beside Linux, Debian provides a complete, binary distribution for the following operating system kernels:• FreeBSD: provided through the kfreebsd-amd64 and kfreebsd-i386 ports, for 64-bit PCs and 32-bit
PCs respectively. These ports were first released in Debian 6.0 Squeeze as a technology preview.
However they were not part of the Debian 8 Jessie release.
In addition to these, work is in progress on the following adaptations:• avr32, port to Atmel’s 32-bit RISC architecture,• hurd-i386, a port for 32-bit PC. This port will use GNU Hurd, the new operating system being put
together by the GNU group,• sh, port to Hitachi SuperH processors.
There were attempts to port the distribution to the NetBSD kernel, providing netbsd-i386 (for 32bit PCs) and netbsd-alpha (for Alpha machines) but these ports were never released and are currently
abandoned.
For more information on the available ports see the ports pages at the website (https://www.
debian.org/ports/).

4.3 How compatible is Debian with other distributions of Linux?
Debian developers communicate with other Linux distribution creators in an effort to maintain binary
compatibility across Linux distributions. 1 Most commercial Linux products run as well under Debianas they do on the system upon which they were built.
Debian GNU/Linux adheres to the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (https://www.pathname.
com/fhs). However, there is room for interpretation in some of the rules within this standard, so there
may be slight differences between a Debian system and other Linux systems.

4.4 How source code compatible is Debian with other Unix systems?
For most applications Linux source code is compatible with other Unix systems. It supports almost
everything that is available in System V Unix systems and the free and commercial BSD-derived systems.
However in the Unix business such claim has nearly no value because there is no way to prove it. In thesoftware development area complete compatibility is required instead of compatibility in ”about most”
cases. So years ago the need for standards arose, and nowadays POSIX.1 (IEEE Standard 1003.1-1990)
is one of the major standards for source code compatibility in Unix-like operating systems.
Linux is intended to adhere to POSIX.1, but the POSIX standards cost real money and the POSIX.1(and FIPS 151-2) certification is quite expensive; this made it more difficult for the Linux developers towork on complete POSIX conformance. The certification costs make it unlikely that Debian will get an
1 The Linux Standard Base (https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/lsb/start/) is a specification for allowing thesame binary package to be used on multiple distributions. After Jessie (Debian 8) was released, Debian abandoned (https://sources.debian.org/src/lsb/9.20170808/debian/README.Debian/) the pursuit of LSB compatibility. See thisJuly 3, 2015 message from Didier Raboud (https://lists.debian.org/4526217.myWFlvm1rM@gyllingar) and the following discussion for background information.

14

CHAPTER 4. COMPATIBILITY ISSUES

4.5. CAN I USE DEBIAN PACKAGES (”.DEB” …

official conformance certification even if it completely passed the validation suite. (The validation suite
is now freely available, so it is expected that more people will work on POSIX.1 issues.)
Unifix GmbH (Braunschweig, Germany) developed a Linux system that has been certified to conformto FIPS 151-2 (a superset of POSIX.1). This technology was available in Unifix’ own distribution called
Unifix Linux 2.0 and in Lasermoon’s Linux-FT.

4.5

Can I use Debian packages (”.deb” files) on my Red Hat/Slackware/... Linux system? Can I use Red Hat packages (”.rpm”
files) on my Debian GNU/Linux system?

Different Linux distributions use different package formats and different package management programs.
You probably can: A program to unpack a Debian package onto a Linux host that is been built from àforeign’distribution is available, and will generally work, in the sense that files will be unpacked.
The converse is probably also true, that is, a program to unpack a Red Hat or Slackware package
on a host that is based on Debian GNU/Linux will probably succeed in unpacking the package andplacing most files in their intended directories. This is largely a consequence of the existence (andbroad adherence to) the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. The Alien (https://packages.
debian.org/alien) package is used to convert between different package formats.
You probably do not want to: Most package managers write administrative files when they are used
to unpack an archive. These administrative files are generally not standardized. Therefore, thèeffect of unpacking a Debian package on a foreign’
host will have unpredictable (certainly not
useful) effects on the package manager on that system. Likewise, utilities from other distributions
might succeed in unpacking their archives on Debian systems, but will probably cause the Debianpackage management system to fail when the time comes to upgrade or remove some packages,
or even simply to report exactly what packages are present on a system.
A better way: The Linux File System Standard (and therefore Debian GNU/Linux) requires that subdirectories under /usr/local/ be entirely under the user’s discretion. Therefore, users can unpack̀foreign’packages into this directory, and then manage their configuration, upgrade and removal
individually.

4.6

How should I install a non-Debian program?

Files under the directory /usr/local/ are not under the control of the Debian package management system. Therefore, it is good practice to place the source code for your program in /usr/local/src/. For example, you might extract the files for a package named ”foo.tar” into the directory/usr/local/src/foo. After you compile them, place the binaries in /usr/local/bin/, the libraries in /usr/local/lib/, and the configuration files in /usr/local/etc/.
If your programs and/or files really must be placed in some other directory, you could still store themin /usr/local/, and build the appropriate symbolic links from the required location to its location in/usr/local/, e.g., you could make the link
ln -s /usr/local/bin/foo /usr/bin/foo

In any case, if you obtain a package whose copyright allows redistribution, you should consider
making a Debian package of it, and uploading it for the Debian system. Guidelines for becoming a
package developer are included in the Debian Policy manual (see Section 12.1).

15

Chapter 5

Software available in the Debiansystem5.1

What types of applications and development software are available for Debian GNU/Linux?

Like most Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux provides:• the major GNU applications for software development, file manipulation, and text processing,including gcc, g++, make, texinfo, Emacs, the Bash shell and numerous upgraded Unix utilities,• Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk and various related programs, modules and libraries for each of them,• TeX (LaTeX) and Lyx, dvips, Ghostscript,• the Xorg windowing system, which provides a networked graphical user interface for Linux, andcountless X applications including the GNOME, KDE and Xfce desktop environments,• a full suite of networking applications, including servers for Internet protocols such as HTTP
(WWW), FTP, NNTP (news), SMTP and POP (mail) and DNS (name servers); relational databases
like PostgreSQL, MySQL; also provided are web browsers including the various Mozilla products,• a complete set of office applications, including the LibreOffice productivity suite, Gnumeric andother spreadsheets, WYSIWYG editors, calendars.
More than 58100 packages, ranging from news servers and readers to sound support, FAX programs,
database and spreadsheet programs, image processing programs, communications, net, and mail utilities, Web servers, and even ham-radio programs are included in the distribution. Other 1000 software
suites are available as Debian packages, but are not formally part of Debian due to license restrictions.

5.2

Who wrote all that software?

For each package the authors of the program(s) are credited in the file /usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/copyright,
where PACKAGE is to be substituted with the package’s name.
Maintainers who package this software for the Debian GNU/Linux system are listed in the Debian control file (see Section 7.4) that comes with each package. The Debian changelog, in /usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/cha
mentions the people who’ve worked on the Debian packaging too.

5.3

How can I get a current list of programs that have been packaged for Debian?

A complete list is available from any of the Debian mirrors (https://www.debian.org/distrib/
ftplist), in the file indices/Maintainers. That file includes the package names and the names
and e-mails of their respective maintainers.
17

CHAPTER 5. SOFTWARE AVAILABLE IN THE …

5.4. HOW CAN I INSTALL A DEVELOPER’S …

The WWW interface to the Debian packages (https://packages.debian.org/) conveniently
summarizes the packages in each of about thirty ”sections” of the Debian archive.

5.4 How can I install a developer’s environment to build packages?
If you want to build packages in your Debian system you will need to have a basic development environment, including a C/C++ compiler and some other essential packages. In order to install thisenvironment you just need to install the build-essential package. This is a meta-package or placeholder package which depends on the standard development tools one needs to build a Debian package.
Some software can, however, need additional software to be rebuilt, including library headers or
additional tools such as autoconf or gettext. Debian provides many of the tools needed to build othersoftware as Debian packages.
Finding which software is precisely required can be tricky, however, unless you are planning on
rebuilding Debian packages. This last task is rather easy to do, as official packages have to include a listof the additional software (besides the packages in build-essential) needed to build the package,
this is known as Build-Dependencies. To install all the packages needed to build a given source
package and then build said source package you can just run:
# apt-get build-dep foo# apt-get source --build foo

Notice that if you want to build the Linux kernels distributed by Debian you will want to install also
the kernel-package package. For more information see Section 10.2.

5.5 What is missing from Debian GNU/Linux?
There is a list of packages which still need to be packaged for Debian, the Work-Needing and Prospective
Packages list (https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/).
For more details about adding missing things, see Chapter 13.

5.6 Why do I get ”ld: cannot find -lfoo” messages when compiling programs? Why aren’t there any libfoo.so files in Debianlibrary packages?
Debian Policy requires that such symbolic links (to libfoo.so.x.y.z or similar) are placed in separate,
development packages. Those packages are usually named libfoo-dev or libfooX-dev (presuming thelibrary package is named libfooX, and X is a whole number).

5.7 (How) Does Debian support Java?
Several free implementations of Java technology are available as Debian packages, providing both Java
Development Kits as well as Runtime Environments. You can write, debug and run Java programs using
Debian.
Running a Java applet requires a web browser with the capability to recognize and execute it. Several
web browsers available in Debian, such as Mozilla or Konqueror, support Java plug-ins that enablerunning Java applets within them.
Please refer to the Debian Java FAQ (https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-java-faq/)
for more information.

5.8 How can I check that I am using a Debian system, and what
version it is?
In order to make sure that your system has been installed from the real Debian base disks, use the18CHAPTER 5. SOFTWARE AVAILABLE IN THE …

5.9. HOW DOES DEBIAN SUPPORT …

lsb_release -acommand. It will display the name of the distribution (in Distributor ID field) and the version of thesystem (in Release and Codename fields). The following is an example run in a Debian system:$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:
Debian GNU/Linux 7.4 (wheezy)Release:7.4
Codename:wheezyYou can also check for the existence of /etc/debian_version file, which contains a single oneline entry giving the version number of the release, as defined by the package base-files.
Users should be aware, however, that the Debian system consists of many parts, each of which can be
updated (almost) independently. Each Debian ”release” contains well defined and unchanging contents.
Updates are separately available. For a one-line description of the installation status of package foo,
use the command dpkg --list foo. For a more verbose description, use:
dpkg --status foo

To view versions of all installed packages, run:dpkg -lNote that the existence of the program dpkg shows that you should be able to install Debian packages
on your system. However, since the program has been ported to many other operating systems andarchitectures, this is no longer a reliable method of determining if a system is Debian GNU/Linux.

5.9

How does Debian support non-English languages?

• Debian GNU/Linux is distributed with keymaps for nearly two dozen keyboards, and with utilities(in the kbd package) to install, view, and modify the tables.
The installation prompts the user to specify the keyboard to use.
• Nearly all of the software in Debian supports UTF-8 as character set. Legacy character sets, suchas ISO-8859-1 or ISO-8859-2, should be considered obsolete.
• Currently, support for German-, Spanish-, French-, Hungarian-, Italian-, Japanese-, Korean-, Dutch, Polish-, Portuguese-, Russian-, Turkish-, and Chinese-language manual pages is provided throughthe manpages-LANG packages (where LANG is the two-letter ISO country code). To access an NLS
manual page, the user must set the shell LC_MESSAGES variable to the appropriate string.
For example, in the case of the Italian-language manual pages, LC_MESSAGES needs to be set to’italian’. The man program will then search for Italian manual pages under /usr/share/man/it/.

5.10 Where is ezmlm/djbdns/qmail?
Dan J. Bernstein used to distribute all software he has written (https://cr.yp.to/software.html)
with a restrictive license which does not allow modified binaries to be distributed. In november 2007
however, Bernstein said ”[...] i have decided to put all of my future and [...] past software into the publicdomain”. See FAQ from distributors (https://cr.yp.to/distributors.html) for his distribution
terms.
As of this writing (2016-03), ezmlm-idx is available in experimental only (mlmmj is similar, andshipped with Debian jessie); djbdns is available in sid (unstable) only, see Bug #516394 (https://bugs.debian.org/516394) and Bug #796118 (https://bugs.debian.org/796118) for details and see dbndns for a similar alternative; the publicfile software is still not free software, apublicfile-installer package is available from Debian’s contrib section.
Other software of Dan J. Bernstein (qmail, daemontools, ucspi-tcp) is shipped with Debian.
19

CHAPTER 5. SOFTWARE AVAILABLE IN THE …

5.11. WHERE IS A PLAYER FOR FLASH (SWF)?

5.11 Where is a player for Flash (SWF)?
Debian ships both gnash and swfdec: two free SWF movie players.

5.12 Where is Google Earth?
Google Earth is available for GNU/Linux from Google’s web site, but not only it is not Free Software,
but is completely undistributable by a third party. However, googleearth-package (in the contribsection) might be helpful in using this software.

5.13 Where is VoIP software?
Two main open protocols are used for Voice Over IP: SIP and H.323. Both are implemented by a wide
variety of software in Debian main. ekiga is one of the popular clients.

5.14 I have a wireless network card which doesn’t work with Linux.
What should I do?
Buy one which does :)Alternatively, use ndiswrapper to use a driver for Windows (if you have one) on your Linux system. See the Debian Wiki ndiswrapper page (https://wiki.debian.org/NdisWrapper) for more
information.

20

Chapter 6

The Debian archives
6.1

How many Debian distributions are there?

There are three major distributions: the ”stable” distribution, the ”testing” distribution, and the ”uǹstable” distribution. The ”testing” distribution is sometimes frozen’(see Section 6.5.1). Next to these,
there is the ”oldstable” distribution (that’s just the one from before ”stable”), and the ”experimental”
distribution.
Experimental is used for packages which are still being developed, and with a high risk of breaking
your system. It’s used by developers who’d like to study and test bleeding edge software. Users shouldn’t
be using packages from there, because they can be dangerous and harmful even for the most experienced
people.
See Chapter 3 for help when choosing a Debian distribution.

6.2

What are all those names like etch, lenny, etc.?

They are just ”codenames”. When a Debian distribution is in the development stage, it has no version
number but a codename. The purpose of these codenames is to make easier the mirroring of the Debian
distributions (if a real directory like unstable suddenly changed its name to stable, a lot of stuff
would have to be needlessly downloaded again).
Currently, stable is a symbolic link to bullseye (i.e. Debian GNU/Linux 11) and testing is asymbolic link to bookworm. This means that bullseye is the current stable distribution and bookworm
is the current testing distribution.
unstable is a permanent symbolic link to sid, as sid is always the unstable distribution (seeSection 6.3).

6.2.1

Which other codenames have been used in the past?

Aside bullseye and bookworm, other codenames that have been already used are: buzz for release
1.1, rex for release 1.2, bo for releases 1.3.x, hamm for release 2.0, slink for release 2.1, potato forrelease 2.2, woody for release 3.0, sarge for release 3.1, etch for release 4.0, lenny for release 5.0,
squeeze for release 6.0, wheezy for release 7, jessie for release 8, stretch for release 9, buster
for release 10.

6.2.2

Where do these codenames come from?

So far they have been characters taken from the ”Toy Story” movies by Pixar.
• buzz (Debian 1.1) was the spaceman Buzz Lightyear,• rex (Debian 1.2) was the tyrannosaurus,• bo (Debian 1.3) was Bo Peep, the girl who took care of the sheep,• hamm (Debian 2.0) was the piggy bank,21

CHAPTER 6. THE DEBIAN ARCHIVES

6.3. WHAT ABOUT ”SID”?

• slink (Debian 2.1) was Slinky Dog, the toy dog,
• potato (Debian 2.2) was, of course, Mr. Potato,• woody (Debian 3.0) was the cowboy,• sarge (Debian 3.1) was the sergeant of the Green Plastic Army Men,
• etch (Debian 4.0) was the toy whiteboard (Etch-a-Sketch),• lenny (Debian 5.0) was the toy binoculars,• squeeze (Debian 6) was the name of the three-eyed aliens,• wheezy (Debian 7) was the rubber toy penguin with a red bow tie,
• jessie (Debian 8) was the yodeling cowgirl,• stretch (Debian 9) was the rubber toy octopus with suckers on her eight long arms.
• buster (Debian 10) was Andy’s pet dog.
• bullseye (Debian 11) was Woody’s wooden toyhorse.
• bookworm (Debian 12) was a green toy worm with a built-in flashlight who loves reading books.
• trixie (Debian 13) was a blue plastic triceratops.
• sid was the evil neighbor kid next door who broke all toys.
The decision (https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1996/06/msg00515.html) of using Toy Story names was made (https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1997/04/msg00011.
html) by Bruce Perens who was, at the time, the Debian Project Leader and was working also at Pixar,
the company that produced the movies.

6.3 What about ”sid”?
sid or unstable is the place where most of the packages are initially uploaded. It will never be released
directly, because packages which are to be released will first have to be included in testing, in order tobe released in stable later on. sid contains packages for both released and unreleased architectures.
The name ”sid” also comes from the ”Toy Story” animated motion picture: Sid was the boy nextdoor who destroyed toys :-)1

6.4 What does the stable directory contain?
• stable/main/: This directory contains the packages which formally constitute the most recent
release of the Debian GNU/Linux system.
These packages all comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (https://www.debian.
org/social_contract#guidelines), and are all freely usable and distributable.
1 When the present-day sid did not exist, the FTP site organization had one major flaw: there was an assumption that when
an architecture is created in the current unstable, it will be released when that distribution becomes the new stable. For manyarchitectures that isn’t the case, with the result that those directories had to be moved at release time. This was impracticalbecause the move would chew up lots of bandwidth.
The archive administrators worked around this problem for several years by placing binaries for unreleased architectures in a
special directory called ”sid”. For those architectures not yet released, the first time they were released there was a link from thecurrent stable to sid, and from then on they were created inside the unstable tree as normal. This layout was somewhat confusing
to users.
With the advent of package pools (see Section 6.10), binary packages began to be stored in a canonical location in the pool,
regardless of the distribution, so releasing a distribution no longer causes large bandwidth consumption on the mirrors (there is,however, a lot of gradual bandwidth consumption throughout the development process).

22

CHAPTER 6. THE DEBIAN ARCHIVES

6.5. WHAT DOES THE TESTING …

• stable/non-free/: This directory contains packages distribution of which is restricted in a way that
requires that distributors take careful account of the specified copyright requirements.
For example, some packages have licenses which prohibit commercial distribution. Others can beredistributed but are in fact shareware and not free software. The licenses of each of these packages
must be studied, and possibly negotiated, before the packages are included in any redistribution(e.g., in a CD-ROM).
• stable/contrib/: This directory contains packages which are DFSG-free and freely distributablethemselves, but somehow depend on a package that is not freely distributable and thus available
only in the non-free section.

6.5

What does the testing distribution contain?

̀Packages are installed into the testing’directory after they have undergone some degree of testing inunstable.
They must be in sync on all architectures where they have been built and mustn’t have dependencies that make them uninstallable; they also need to have fewer release-critical bugs than the versions
̀
currently in unstable. This way, we hope that testing’is always close to being a release candidate.
More information about the status of ”testing” in general and the individual packages is available athttps://www.debian.org/devel/testing.

6.5.1

̀
What about ”testing”? How is it frozen’?

̀When the ”testing” distribution is mature enough, the release manager starts freezing’it. The normal
propagation delays are increased to ensure that as few new bugs as possible from ”unstable” enter”testing”.
̀After a while, the ”testing” distribution becomes truly frozen’.
This means that all new packages
that are to propagate to the ”testing” are held back, unless they include release-critical bug fixes. Thè”testing” distribution can also remain in such a deep freeze during the so-called test
cycles’, when therelease is imminent.
̀When a ”testing” release becomes frozen’,”unstable” tends to partially freeze as well. This is because
developers are reluctant to upload radically new software to unstable, in case the frozen software in
testing needs minor updates and to fix release critical bugs which keep testing from becoming ”stable”.
We keep a record of bugs in the ”testing” distribution that can hold off a package from being released,or bugs that can hold back the whole release. For details, please see current testing release information(https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/).
Once that bug count lowers to maximum acceptable values, the frozen ”testing” distribution is declared ”stable” and released with a version number.
The most important bug count is the ”Release Critical” bug count, which can be followed in the
Release-critical bug status page (https://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/). A common
release goal is NoRCBugs (https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/NoRCBugs) which meansthat the distribution should not have any bugs of severity critical, grave or serious. The full list ofissues considered critical can be found in the RC policy document (https://release.debian.org/
testing/rc_policy.txt).
With each new release, the previous ”stable” distribution becomes obsolete and moves to the archive.
For more information please see Debian archive (https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive).

6.6

What does the unstable distribution contain?

̀The unstable’
directory contains a snapshot of the current development system. Users are welcome touse and test these packages, but are warned about their state of readiness. The advantage of using theunstable distribution is that you are always up-to-date with the latest in GNU/Linux software industry,
but if it breaks: you get to keep both parts :-)̀
There are also main, contrib and non-free subdirectories in unstable’,separated on the same criterià
as in stable’.
23

CHAPTER 6. THE DEBIAN ARCHIVES

6.7. WHAT ARE ALL THOSE DIRECTORIES AT …

6.7 What are all those directories at the Debian archives?
The software that has been packaged for Debian GNU/Linux is available in one of several directory trees
on each Debian mirror site.
The dists directory is short for ”distributions”, and it is the canonical way to access the currently
available Debian releases (and pre-releases).
The pool directory contains the actual packages, see Section 6.10.
There are the following supplementary directories:/tools/: DOS utilities for creating boot disks, partitioning your disk drive, compressing/decompressing
files, and booting Linux.
/doc/: The basic Debian documentation, such as this FAQ, the bug reporting system instructions, etc.
/indices/: various indices of the site (the Maintainers file and the override files).
/project/: mostly developer-only materials and some miscellaneous files.

6.8 What are all those directories inside dists/stable/main?
Within each of the major directory trees2 , there are three sets of subdirectories containing index files.
There’s one set of binary-something subdirectories which contain index files for binary packagesof each available computer architecture, for example binary-i386 for packages which execute onIntel x86 PC machines or binary-sparc for packages which execute on Sun SPARCStations.
The complete list of available architectures for each release is available at the release’s web page(https://www.debian.org/releases). For the current release, please see Section 4.1.
The index files in binary-* are called Packages(.gz, .bz2) and they include a summary of each binary
package that is included in that distribution. The actual binary packages reside in the top level pooldirectory.
Furthermore, there’s a subdirectory called source/ which contains index files for source packages
included in the distribution. The index file is called Sources(.gz, .bz2).
Last but not least, there’s a set of subdirectories meant for the installation system index files, they
are at debian-installer/binary-architecture.

6.9 Where is the source code?
Source code is included for everything in the Debian system. Moreover, the license terms of mostprograms in the system require that source code be distributed along with the programs, or that an offer
to provide the source code accompany the programs.
The source code is distributed in the pool directory (see Section 6.10) together with all the architecturespecific binary directories. To retrieve the source code without having to be familiar with the structureof the archive, try a command like apt-get source mypackagename.
Due to restrictions in their licenses, source code may or may not be available for packages in the”contrib” and ”non-free” areas, which are not formally part of the Debian system. In some cases only
sourceless ”binary blobs” can be distributed (see for instance firmware-misc-nonfree); in othercases the license prohibits the distribution of prebuilt binaries, but does allow packages of source code
which users can compile locally (see broadcom-sta-dkms).

6.10 What’s in the pool directory?
̀
Packages are kept in a large pool’,
structured according to the name of the source package. To makè̀̀this manageable, the pool is subdivided by section ( main’,
contrib’and non-free’)and by the first
letter of the source package name. These directories contain several files: the binary packages for eacharchitecture, and the source packages from which the binary packages were generated.
2 dists/stable/main, dists/stable/contrib, dists/stable/non-free, and dists/unstable/main/, etc.

24

CHAPTER 6. THE DEBIAN ARCHIVES

6.11. WHAT IS ”INCOMING”?

You can find out where each package is placed by executing a command like apt-cache showsrc
̀mypackagename and looking at the Directory:’line. For example, the apache packages are stored inpool/main/a/apache/.
Additionally, since there are so many lib* packages, these are treated specially: for instance, libpaper packages are stored in pool/main/libp/libpaper/.
3

6.11 What is ”incoming”?
After a developer uploads a package, it stays for a short while in the ”incoming” directory before it ischecked that it’s genuine and allowed into the archive.
Usually nobody should install things from this place. However, in some rare cases of emergency,
the incoming directory is available at https://incoming.debian.org/. You can manually fetch
packages, check the GPG signature and MD5sums in the .changes and .dsc files, and then install them.

6.12 How do I set up my own apt-able repository?
If you have built some private Debian packages which you’d like to install using the standard Debianpackage management tools, you can set up your own apt-able package archive. This is also useful if you’d
like to share your Debian packages while these are not distributed by the Debian project. Instructions on
how to do this are given on the Debian Wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/HowToSetupADebianRepository).

3 Historically, packages were kept in the subdirectory of dists corresponding to which distribution contained them. This
turned out to cause various problems, such as large bandwidth consumption on mirrors when major changes were made. Thiswas fixed with the introduction of the package pool.
The dists directories are still used for the index files used by programs like apt.

25Chapter 7

Basics of the Debian package
management system
This chapter touches on some lower level internals of Debian package management. If you’re interested
mainly in usage of the relevant tools, skip to chapters Chapter 8 and/or Chapter 9.

7.1

What is a Debian package?

Packages generally contain all of the files necessary to implement a set of related commands or features.
There are two types of Debian packages:• Binary packages, which contain executables, configuration files, man/info pages, copyright information, and other documentation. These packages are distributed in a Debian-specific archive
format (see Section 7.2); they are usually characterized by having a ’.deb’ file extension. Binary
packages can be unpacked using the Debian utility dpkg (possibly via a frontend like aptitude);details are given in its manual page.
• Source packages, which consist of a .dsc file describing the source package (including the namesof the following files), a .orig.tar.gz file that contains the original unmodified source in gzipcompressed tar format and usually a .diff.gz file that contains the Debian-specific changes
to the original source. The utility dpkg-source packs and unpacks Debian source archives;
details are provided in its manual page. (The program apt-get can be used as a frontend for
dpkg-source.)
Installation of software by the package system uses ”dependencies” which are carefully designed by
the package maintainers. These dependencies are documented in the control file associated with eachpackage. For example, the package containing the GNU C compiler (gcc) ”depends” on the package
binutils which includes the linker and assembler. If a user attempts to install gcc without having
first installed binutils, the package management system (dpkg) will send an error message that it also
needs binutils, and stop installing gcc. (However, this facility can be overridden by the insistentuser, see dpkg(8).) See more in Section 7.9 below.
Debian’s packaging tools can be used to:• manipulate and manage packages or parts of packages,• administer local overrides of files in a package,• aid developers in the construction of package archives, and• aid users in the installation of packages which reside on a remote archive site.

7.2

What is the format of a Debian binary package?

A Debian ”package”, or a Debian archive file, contains the executable files, libraries, and documentation
associated with a particular suite of program or set of related programs. Normally, a Debian archive
file has a filename that ends in .deb.
27

CHAPTER 7. BASICS OF THE DEBIAN PACKAGE … 7.3. WHY ARE DEBIAN PACKAGE FILE NAMES …
The internals of this Debian binary packages format are described in the deb(5) manual page. This
internal format is subject to change (between major releases of Debian GNU/Linux), therefore please
always use dpkg-deb(1) if you need to do lowlevel manipulations on .deb files.

7.3 Why are Debian package file names so long?
The Debian binary package file names conform to the following convention: <foo>_<VersionNumber><DebianRevisionNumber>_<DebianArchitecture>.deb
Note that foo is supposed to be the package name. Checking the package name associated with aparticular Debian archive file (.deb file) can be done in one of these ways:• inspect the ”Packages” file in the directory where it was stored at a Debian archive site. This
file contains a stanza describing each package; the first field in each stanza is the formal package
name.
• use the command dpkg --info foo_VVV-RRR_AAA.deb (where VVV, RRR and AAA are theversion, revision and architecture of the package in question, respectively). This displays, among
other things, the package name corresponding to the archive file being unpacked.
The VVV component is the version number specified by the upstream developer. There are no standards in place here, so the version number may have formats as different as ”19990513” and ”1.3.8pre1”.
The RRR component is the Debian revision number, and is specified by the Debian developer (ora user who chooses to rebuild the package locally). This number corresponds to the revision levelof the Debian package, thus, a new revision level usually signifies changes in the Debian Makefile(debian/rules), the Debian control file (debian/control), the installation or removal scripts (debian/p*),or in the configuration files used with the package.
The AAA component identifies the processor for which the package was built. This is commonly
amd64, which refers to AMD64, Intel 64 or VIA Nano chips. For other possibilities review Debian’sarchive directory structure at Section 6.7. For details, see the description of ”Debian architecture” inthe manual page dpkg-architecture(1).

7.4 What is a Debian control file?
Specifics regarding the contents of a Debian control file are provided in the Debian Policy Manual,
section 5, see Section 12.1.
Briefly, a sample control file is shown below for the Debian package hello:
Package: hello
Version: 2.9-2+deb8u1
Architecture: amd64
Maintainer: Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>
Installed-Size: 145
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14)
Conflicts: hello-traditional
Breaks: hello-debhelper (<< 2.9)
Replaces: hello-debhelper (<< 2.9), hello-traditional
Section: devel
Priority: optional
Homepage: https://www.gnu.org/software/hello/
Description: example package based on GNU hello
The GNU hello program produces a familiar, friendly greeting. It
allows non-programmers to use a classic computer science tool which
would otherwise be unavailable to them.
.
Seriously, though: this is an example of how to do a Debian package.
It is the Debian version of the GNU Project’s ‘hello world’ program(which is itself an example for the GNU Project).

The Package field gives the package name. This is the name by which the package can be manipulatedby the package tools, and usually similar to but not necessarily the same as the first component stringin the Debian archive file name.
28

CHAPTER 7. BASICS OF THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

7.5. WHAT IS A DEBIAN CONFFILE?

The Version field gives both the upstream developer’s version number and (in the last component)
the revision level of the Debian package of this program as explained in Section 7.3.
The Architecture field specifies the chip for which this particular binary was compiled.
The Depends field gives a list of packages that have to be installed in order to install this package
successfully.
The Installed-Size indicates how much disk space the installed package will consume. This is intended to be used by installation front-ends in order to show whether there is enough disk space available to install the program.
The Section line gives the ”section” where this Debian package is stored at the Debian archive sites.
The Priority indicates how important is this package for installation, so that semi-intelligent software
like apt or aptitude can sort the package into a category of e.g. packages optionally installed. See
Section 7.7.
The Maintainer field gives the e-mail address of the person who is currently responsible for maintaining this package.
The Description field gives a brief summary of the package’s features.
For more information about all possible fields a package can have, please see the Debian Policy
Manual, section 5, ”Control files and their fields”, see Section 12.1.

7.5

What is a Debian conffile?

Conffiles is a list of configuration files (usually placed in /etc) that the package management system
will not overwrite when the package is upgraded. This ensures that local values for the contents of thesefiles will be preserved, and is a critical feature enabling the in-place upgrade of packages on a runningsystem.
To determine exactly which files are preserved during an upgrade, run:dpkg --status package

And look under ”Conffiles:”.

7.6

What is a Debian preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm script?

These files are executable scripts which are automatically run before or after a package is installed or
removed. Along with a file named control, all of these files are part of the ”control” section of a
Debian archive file.
The individual files are:preinst This script is executed before the package it belongs to is unpacked from its Debian archive(”.deb”) file. Many ’preinst’ scripts stop services for packages which are being upgraded until theirinstallation or upgrade is completed (following the successful execution of the ’postinst’ script).
postinst This script typically completes any required configuration of the package foo once foo has
been unpacked from its Debian archive (”.deb”) file. Often, ’postinst’ scripts ask users for input,
and/or warn them that if they accept default values, they should remember to go back and reconfigure that package as needed. Many ’postinst’ scripts then execute any commands necessary
to start or restart a service once a new package has been installed or upgraded.
prerm This script typically stops any daemons which are associated with a package. It is executed
before the removal of files associated with the package.
postrm This script typically modifies links or other files associated with foo, and/or removes files
created by the package. (Also see Section 7.8.)
Currently all of the control files can be found in the directory /var/lib/dpkg/info. The files
relevant to package foo begin with the name ”foo” and have file extensions of ”preinst”, ”postinst”,
etc., as appropriate. The file foo.list in that directory lists all of the files that were installed with the
package foo. (Note that the location of these files is a dpkg internal; you should not rely on it.)29

CHAPTER 7. BASICS OF THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

7.7. WHAT IS AN ESSENTIAL, REQUIRED, …

7.7 What is an Essential, Required, Important, Standard, Optional,
or Extra package?
Each Debian package is assigned a priority by the distribution maintainers, as an aid to the package
management system. The priorities are:• Required: packages that are necessary for the proper functioning of the system.
This includes all tools that are necessary to repair system defects. You must not remove thesepackages or your system may become totally broken and you may probably not even be able touse dpkg to put things back. Systems with only the Required packages are probably unusable, butthey do have enough functionality to allow the sysadmin to boot and install more software.
• Important packages should be found on any Unix-like system.
Other packages which the system will not run well or be usable without will be here. This does
NOT include Emacs or X or TeX or any other large application. These packages only constitutethe bare infrastructure.
• Standard packages are standard on any Linux system, including a reasonably small but not too
limited character-mode system. Tools are included to be able to send e-mail (with mutt) anddownload files from archive servers.
This is what will be installed by default if users do not select anything else. It does not include
many large applications, but it does include the Python interpreter and some server software like
OpenSSH (for remote administration) and Exim (for mail delivery, although it can be configured
for local delivery only). It also includes some common generic documentation that most users willfind helpful.
• Optional packages include all those that you might reasonably want to install if you do not knowwhat they are, or that do not have specialized requirements.
This includes X, a full TeX distribution, and lots of applications.
• Extra: packages that either conflict with others with higher priorities, are only likely to be useful
if you already know what they are, or have specialized requirements that make them unsuitablefor ”Optional”.
If you do a default Debian installation all the packages of priority Standard or higher will be installed
in your system. If you select pre-defined tasks you will get lower priority packages too.
Additionally, some packages are marked as Essential since they are absolutely necessary for theproper functioning of the system. The package management tools will refuse to remove these.

7.8 What is a Virtual Package?
A virtual package is a generic name that applies to any one of a group of packages, all of which provide
similar basic functionality. For example, both the konqueror and firefox-esr programs are webbrowsers, and should therefore satisfy any dependency of a program that requires a web browser on asystem, in order to work or to be useful. They are therefore both said to provide the ”virtual package”
called www-browser.
Similarly, exim4 and sendmail both provide the functionality of a mail transport agent. They are
therefore said to provide the virtual package ”mail-transport-agent”. If either one is installed, then any
program depending on the installation of a mail-transport-agent will be satisfied by the presenceof this virtual package.
Debian provides a mechanism so that, if more than one package which provide the same virtual
package is installed on a system, then system administrators can set one as the preferred package. The
relevant command is update-alternatives, and is described further in Section 11.11.
30

CHAPTER 7. BASICS OF THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

7.9

7.9. WHAT IS MEANT BY SAYING THAT A …

What is meant by saying that a package Depends, Recommends,
Suggests, Conflicts, Replaces, Breaks or Provides another package?

The Debian package system has a range of package ”dependencies” which are designed to indicate (ina single flag) the level at which Program A can operate independently of the existence of Program B on
a given system:• Package A depends on Package B if B absolutely must be installed in order to run A. In some cases,
A depends not only on B, but on a version of B. In this case, the version dependency is usuallya lower limit, in the sense that A depends on any version of B more recent than some specified
version.
• Package A recommends Package B, if the package maintainer judges that most users would notwant A without also having the functionality provided by B.
• Package A suggests Package B if B contains files that are related to (and usually enhance) the
functionality of A.
• Package A conflicts with Package B when A will not operate if B is installed on the system. Mostoften, conflicts are cases where A contains files which are an improvement over those in B. ”Conflicts” are often combined with ”replaces”.
• Package A replaces Package B when files installed by B are removed and (in some cases) overwritten by files in A.
• Package A breaks Package B when both packages cannot be simultaneously configured in a system.
The package management system will refuse to install one if the other one is already installed andconfigured in the system.
• Package A provides Package B when all of the files and functionality of B are incorporated into
A. This mechanism provides a way for users with constrained disk space to get only that part ofpackage A which they really need.
More detailed information on the use of each of these terms can be found in the Debian Policy
manual, section 7.2, ”Binary Dependencies”, see Section 12.1.

7.10 What is meant by Pre-Depends?
”Pre-Depends” is a special dependency. In the case of most packages, dpkg will unpack the archive fileof a package (i.e., its .deb file) independently of whether or not the files on which it depends exist
on the system. Simplistically, unpacking means that dpkg will extract the files from the archive filethat were meant to be installed on your file system, and put them in place. If those packages depend on
the existence of some other packages on your system, dpkg will refuse to complete the installation (byexecuting its ”configure” action) until the other packages are installed.
However, for some packages, dpkg will refuse even to unpack them until certain dependencies areresolved. Such packages are said to ”Pre-depend” on the presence of some other packages. The Debian
project provided this mechanism to support the safe upgrading of systems from a.out format to ELF
format, where the order in which packages were unpacked was critical. There are other large upgrade
situations where this method is useful, e.g. the packages with the required priority and their LibC
dependency.
As before, more detailed information about this can be found in the Policy manual.

7.11 What is meant by unknown, install, remove, purge and hold in
the package status?
These ”want” flags tell what the user wanted to do with a package (as indicated by the user’s direct
invocations of dpkg/apt/ aptitude).
Their meanings are:31

CHAPTER 7. BASICS OF THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

7.12. HOW DO I PUT A PACKAGE ON HOLD?

• unknown - the user has never indicated whether the package is wanted.
• install - the user wants the package installed or upgraded.
• remove - the user wants the package removed, but does not want to remove any existing configuration file.
• purge - the user wants the package to be removed completely, including its configuration files.
• hold - the user wants this package not to be processed, i.e. wants to keep the current version withthe current status whatever that is.

7.12 How do I put a package on hold?
There are three ways of holding back packages, with dpkg, apt or aptitude.
With dpkg, you have to export the list of package selections, with:dpkg --get-selections \* > selections.txt

Then edit the resulting file selections.txt, change the line containing the package you wish tohold, e.g. libc6, from this:libc6

installto this:
libc6

hold

Save the file, and reload it into dpkg database with:dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt

With apt, you can set a package to hold using
apt-mark hold package_name

and remove the hold withapt-mark unhold package_nameWith aptitude, you can hold a package using
aptitude hold package_name

and remove the hold withaptitude unhold package_name7.13 How do I install a source package?
Debian source packages can’t actually be ”installed”, they are just unpacked in whatever directory you
want to build the binary packages they produce.
Source packages are distributed on most of the same mirrors where you can obtain the binary packages. If you set up your APT’s sources.list(5) to include the appropriate ”deb-src” lines, you’ll be able
to easily download any source package by running
apt-get source foo

To help you in actually building the source package, Debian source packages provide the so-calledbuild-dependencies mechanism. This means that the source package maintainer keeps a list of otherpackages that are required to build their package. To see how this is useful, run
apt-get build-dep foo

before building the source.
32

CHAPTER 7. BASICS OF THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

7.14. HOW DO I BUILD BINARY PACKAGES …

7.14 How do I build binary packages from a source package?
The preferred way to do this is by using various wrapper tools. We’ll show how it’s done using thedevscripts tools. Install this package if you haven’t done so already.
Now, first get the source package:
apt-get source foo

and change to the source tree:
cd foo-*Then install needed build-dependencies (if any):sudo apt-get build-dep foo

Then create a dedicated version of your own build (so that you won’t get confused later when Debian
itself releases a new version):dch -l local ’Blah blah blah’And finally build your package:
debuild -us -uc

If everything worked out fine, you should now be able to install your package by runningsudo dpkg -i ../*.deb

If you prefer to do things manually, and don’t want to use devscripts, follow this procedure:
You will need all of foo_*.dsc, foo_*.tar.gz and foo_*.diff.gz to compile the source (note: there is no.diff.gz for some packages that are native to Debian).
Once you have them (Section 7.13) and if you have the dpkg-dev package installed, the following
command:dpkg-source -x foo_version-revision.dsc

will extract the package into a directory called foo-version.
If you just want to compile the package, you may cd into the foo-version directory and issue thecommanddpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

to build the package (note that this also requires the fakeroot package), and thendpkg -i ../foo_version-revision_arch.deb

to install the newly-built package(s).

7.15 How do I create Debian packages myself?
For a more detailed description on this, read the New Maintainers’ Guide, available in the maint-guide
package or at https://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#maint-guide, or the Guide for
Debian Maintainers, available in the debmake-doc package or at https://www.debian.org/doc/
devel-manuals#debmake-doc.

33

Chapter 8

The Debian package management
tools
8.1

What programs does Debian provide for managing its packages?

There are multiple tools that are used to manage Debian packages, from graphic or text-based interfaces
to the low level tools used to install packages. All the available tools rely on the lower level tools toproperly work and are presented here in decreasing complexity level.
It is important to understand that the higher level package management tools such as aptitude orsynaptic rely on apt which, itself, relies on dpkg to manage the packages in the system.
See Chapter 2. Debian package management (https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-referenc
ch02.en.html) of the Debian reference (https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/)
for more information about the Debian package management utilities. This document is available invarious languages and formats, see the Debian Reference entry in the DDP Users’ Manuals overview(https://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals#quick-reference).

8.1.1

dpkg

This is the main package management program. dpkg can be invoked with many options. Some common
uses are:• Find out all the options: dpkg --help.
• Print out the control file (and other information) for a specified package: dpkg --info foo_VVV-RRR.deb.
• Install a package (including unpacking and configuring) onto the file system of the hard disk:
dpkg --install foo_VVV-RRR.deb.
• Unpack (but do not configure) a Debian archive into the file system of the hard disk: dpkg--unpack foo_VVV-RRR.deb. Note that this operation does not necessarily leave the package in a usable state; some files may need further customization to run properly. This command
removes any already-installed version of the program and runs the preinst (see Section 7.6) script
associated with the package.
• Configure a package that already has been unpacked: dpkg --configure foo. Among otherthings, this action runs the postinst (see Section 7.6) script associated with the package. It also
updates the files listed in the conffiles for this package. Notice that the ’configure’ operation
takes as its argument a package name (e.g., foo), not the name of a Debian archive file (e.g.,
foo_VVV-RRR.deb).
• Extract a single file named ”blurf” (or a group of files named ”blurf*”) from a Debian archive:
dpkg --fsys-tarfile foo_VVV-RRR.deb | tar -xf - ’blurf*’.
• Remove a package (but not its configuration files): dpkg --remove foo.
35

CHAPTER 8. THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

8.1. WHAT PROGRAMS DOES DEBIAN …

• Remove a package (including its configuration files): dpkg --purge foo.
• List the installation status of packages containing the string (or regular expression) ”foo*”: dpkg--list ’foo*’.

8.1.2 APTAPT is the Advanced Package Tool, an advanced interface to the Debian packaging system which provides
the apt-get program. It provides commandline tools for searching and managing packages, and forquerying information about them, as well as low-level access to all features of the libapt-pkg library. For
more information, see the User’s Guide in /usr/share/doc/apt-doc/guide.html/index.html(you will have to install the apt-doc package).
Starting with Debian Jessie, some frequently used apt-get and apt-cache commands have an equivalent via the new apt binary. This means some popular commands like apt-get update, apt-get install,
apt-get remove, apt-cache search, or apt-cache show now can also be called simply via apt, say apt
update, apt install, apt remove, apt search, or apt show. The following is an overview of the oldand new commands:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install package
apt-get remove package
apt-get autoremove
apt-cache search string
apt-cache policy package
apt-cache show package
apt-cache showpkg package

->
->
->
->
->
->
->
->
->
->

apt update
apt upgrade
apt full-upgrade
apt install package
apt remove package
apt autoremove
apt search string
apt list -a package
apt show package
apt show -a package

The apt tool merges functionality of apt-get and apt-cache and by default has a fancier colored output
format, making it more pleasant for humans. For usage in scripts or advanced use cases, apt-get is still
preferable or needed.
apt-get provides a simple way to retrieve and install packages from multiple sources using the command line. Unlike dpkg, apt-get does not understand .deb files, it works with the packages proper nameand can only install .deb archives from a source specified in /etc/apt/sources.list. apt-get willcall dpkg directly after downloading the .deb archives1 from the configured sources.
Some common ways to use apt-get are:
• To update the list of packages known by your system, you can run:
apt update(you should execute this regularly to update your package lists)• To install the foo package and all its dependencies, run:
apt install foo• To remove the foo package from your system, run:
apt remove foo• To remove the foo package and its configuration files from your system, run:
apt purge foo• To list all packages for which newer versions are available, run:
apt list --upgradable
1 Notice that there are ports that make this tool available with other package management systems, like Red Hat package
manager, also known as rpm

36

CHAPTER 8. THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

8.1. WHAT PROGRAMS DOES DEBIAN …

• To upgrade all the packages on your system (without installing extra packages or removing packages), run:
apt upgrade• To upgrade all the packages on your system, and, if needed for a package upgrade, installing extra
packages or removing packages, run:
apt full-upgrade(The command upgrade keeps a package at its installed obsolete version if upgrading would
need an extra package to be installed, for a new dependency to be satisfied. The full-upgradecommand is less conservative.)
Note that you must be logged in as root to perform any commands that modify packages.
Note that apt-get now also installs recommended packages as default, and thanks to its robustness
it’s the preferred program for package management from console to perform system installation andmajor system upgrades.
The apt tool suite also includes the apt-cache tool to query the package lists. You can use it to findpackages providing specific functionality through simple text or regular expression queries and throughqueries of dependencies in the package management system. Some common ways to use apt-cache are:
• To find packages whose description contain word:
apt search word

• To print the detailed information of a package:
apt show package• To print the packages a given package depends on:
apt-cache depends package• To print detailed information on the versions available for a package and the packages that reversedepends on it:
apt-cache showpkg package

For more information, install the apt package and read apt(8), apt-get(8), sources.list(5) and install
the apt-doc package and read /usr/share/doc/apt-doc/guide.html/index.html.

8.1.3

aptitudeaptitude is a package manager for Debian GNU/Linux systems that provides a frontend to the apt
package management infrastructure. aptitude is a text-based interface using the curses library. Actions
may be performed from a visual interface or from the command-line.
aptitude can be used to perform management tasks in a fast and easy way. It allows the user toview the list of packages and to perform package management tasks such as installing, upgrading, andremoving packages.
aptitude provides the functionality of apt-get, as well as many additional features:• aptitude offers easy access to all versions of a package.
• aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software by listing it under ”Obsolete and LocallyCreated Packages”.
• aptitude includes a fairly powerful system for searching particular packages and limiting the
package display. Users familiar with mutt will pick up quickly, as mutt was the inspiration for
the expression syntax.
37

CHAPTER 8. THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

8.2. DEBIAN CLAIMS TO BE ABLE TO UPDATE …

• aptitude can be used to install the predefined tasks available. For more information see Section 8.1.5.
• aptitude in full screen mode has su functionality embedded and can be run by a normal user. It
will call su (and ask for the root password, if any) when you really need administrative privileges.
You can use aptitude through a visual interface (simply run aptitude) or directly from the command line. The command line syntax used is very similar to the one used in apt-get. For example, toinstall the foo package, you can run aptitude install foo.
Note that aptitude is the preferred program for daily package management from the console.
For more information, read the manual page aptitude(8) and install the aptitude-doc package.

8.1.4 synaptic
synaptic is a graphical package manager. It enables you to install, upgrade and remove software packages in a user friendly way. Along with most of the features offered by aptitude, it also has a featurefor editing the list of used repositories, and supports browsing all available documentation related to a
package. See the Synaptic Website (https://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/) for more information.

8.1.5 tasksel
When you want to perform a specific task it might be difficult to find the appropiate suite of packages
that fill your need. The Debian developers have defined tasks, a task is a collection of several individual
Debian packages all related to a specific activity. Tasks can be installed through the tasksel programor through aptitude.
Typically, the Debian installer will automatically install the task associated with a standard system
and a desktop environment. The specific desktop environment installed will depend on the CD/DVD
media used, most commonly it will be the GNOME desktop (gnome-desktop task). Also, dependingon your selections throughout the installation process, tasks might be automatically installed in yoursystem. For example, if you selected a language other than English, the task associated with it will be
installed automatically too.

8.1.6 Other package management tools
8.1.6.1 dpkg-deb
This program manipulates Debian archive (.deb) files. Some common uses are:• Find out all the options: dpkg-deb --help.
• Determine what files are contained in a Debian archive file: dpkg-deb --contents foo_VVV-RRR.deb)• Extract the files contained in a named Debian archive into a user specified directory: dpkg-deb--extract foo_VVV-RRR.deb tmp extracts each of the files in foo_VVV-RRR.deb into thedirectory tmp/. This is convenient for examining the contents of a package in a localized directory,
without installing the package into the root file system.
• Extract the control information files from a package: dpkg-deb --control foo_VVV-RRR.deb
tmp.
Note that any packages that were merely unpacked using dpkg-deb --extract will be incorrectly
installed, you should use dpkg --install instead.
More information is given in the manual page dpkg-deb(1).

8.2 Debian claims to be able to update a running program; howis this accomplished?
The kernel (file system) in Debian GNU/Linux systems supports replacing files even while they’re being
used.
38

CHAPTER 8. THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

8.3. HOW CAN I TELL WHAT PACKAGES ARE …

We also provide a program called start-stop-daemon which is used to start daemons at boot timeor to stop daemons when the runlevel is changed (e.g., from multi-user to single-user or to halt). The
same program is used by installation scripts when a new package containing a daemon is installed, tostop running daemons, and restart them as necessary.

8.3

How can I tell what packages are already installed on a Debiansystem?

To learn the status of all the packages installed on a Debian system, execute the command
dpkg --list

This prints out a one-line summary for each package, giving a 2-letter status symbol (explained in
the header), the package name, the version which is installed, and a brief description.
To learn the status of packages whose names match any pattern beginning with ”foo”, run the command:
dpkg --list ’foo*’

To get a more verbose report for a particular package, execute the command:
dpkg --status packagename

8.4

How do I display the files of an installed package?

To list all the files provided by the installed package foo execute the command
dpkg --listfiles foo

Note that the files created by the installation scripts aren’t displayed.

8.5

How can I find out what package produced a particular file?

To identify the package that produced the file named foo execute either:• dpkg --search foo

This searches for foo in installed packages. (This is (currently) equivalent to searching all of thefiles having the file extension of .list in the directory /var/lib/dpkg/info/, and adjusting
the output to print the names of all the packages containing it, and diversions.)
A faster alternative to this is the dlocate tool.
dlocate -S foo• zgrep foo Contents-ARCH.gz

This searches for files which contain the substring foo in their full path names. The files Contents-ARCH.gz(where ARCH represents the wanted architecture) reside in the major package directories (main,
non-free, contrib) at a Debian archive site (i.e. under /debian/dists/bullseye). A Contents
file refers only to the packages in the subdirectory tree where it resides. Therefore, a user might
have to search more than one Contents files to find the package containing the file foo.
This method has the advantage over dpkg --search in that it will find files in packages that are
not currently installed on your system.

• apt-file search foo

If you install the apt-file package, similar to the above, it searches files which contain thesubstring or regular expression foo in their full path names. The advantage over the example
above is that there is no need to retrieve the Contents-ARCH.gz files as it will do this automatically for all the sources defined in /etc/apt/sources.list when you run (as root) apt-file
update.
39̀
8.6. WHY IS FOO-DATA’NOT REMOVED …

CHAPTER 8. THE DEBIAN PACKAGE …

̀̀
8.6 Why is foo-data’
not removed when I uninstall foo’?
How doI make sure old unused library-packages get purged?
̀̀̀̀Some packages are split in program ( foo’)and data ( foo-data’)(or in foo’
and foo-doc’).
This is true formany games, multimedia applications and dictionaries in Debian and has been introduced since someusers might want to access the raw data without installing the program or because the program can bè
run without the data itself, making foo-data’
optional.
Similar situations occur when dealing with libraries: generally these get installed since packages
containing applications depend on them. When the application-package is purged, the library-package
might stay on the system. Or: when the application-package no longer depends upon e.g. libdb4.2, but
upon libdb4.3, the libdb4.2 package might stay when the application-package is upgraded.
̀̀̀In these cases, foo-data’
doesn’t depend on foo’,
so when you remove the foo’
package it will not get
automatically removed by most package management tools. The same holds true for the library packages. This is necessary to avoid circular dependencies. However, if you use apt-get (see Section 8.1.2)
or aptitude (see Section 8.1.3) as your package management tool, they will track automatically installed
packages and give the possibility to remove them, when no packages making use of them remain in yoursystem.

40

Chapter 9

Keeping your Debian system
up-to-date
One of Debian’s goals is to provide a consistent upgrade path and a secure upgrade process. We always
do our best to make upgrading to new releases a smooth procedure. In case there’s some important noteto add to the upgrade process, the packages will alert the user, and often provide a solution to a possible
problem.
You should also read the Release Notes document that describes the details of specific upgrades. It isavailable on the Debian website at https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/releasenotes
and is also shipped on the Debian CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

9.1

How can I keep my Debian system current?

One could simply visit a Debian archive site, then peruse the directories until one finds the desired file,and then fetch it, and finally install it using dpkg. Note that dpkg will install upgrade files in place,even on a running system. Sometimes, a revised package will require the installation of a newly revised
version of another package, in which case the installation will fail until/unless the other package isinstalled.
Many people find this approach much too time-consuming, since Debian evolves so quickly -- typically, a dozen or more new packages are uploaded every week. This number is larger just before a
new major release. To deal with this avalanche, many people prefer to use a more automated method.
Several different packages are available for this purpose:

9.1.1

aptitudeaptitude is the recommended package manager for Debian GNU/Linux systems, and is described in
Section 8.1.3.
Before you can use aptitude to make an upgrade, you’ll have to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list
file to set it up. If you wish to upgrade to the latest stable version of Debian, you’ll probably want touse a source like this one:
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib

You can replace ftp.us.debian.org (the mirror in the United States) with the name of a faster Debianmirror near you. See the mirror list at https://www.debian.org/mirror/list for more information.
Or you can use the redirector service httpredir.debian.org which aims to solve the problem of choosing a Debian mirror. It uses the geographic location of the user and other information to choose thebest mirror that can serve the files. To take advantage of it use a source like this one:
http://httpredir.debian.org/debian stable main contrib

More details on this can be found in the sources.list(5) manual page.
To update your system from the command line, run
41

CHAPTER 9. KEEPING YOUR DEBIAN SYSTEM …

9.2. MUST I GO INTO SINGLE USER MODE IN …

aptitude update

followed by
aptitude full-upgrade

Answer any questions that might come up, and your system will be upgraded.
Note that aptitude is not the recommended tool for doing upgrades from one Debian GNU/Linuxrelease to another. Use apt-get instead. For upgrades between releases you should read the Release
Notes (https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/releasenotes). This document describes
in detail the recommended steps for upgrades from previous releases as well as known issues you should
consider before upgrading.
For details, see the manual page aptitude(8), and the file /usr/share/aptitude/README.

9.1.2 apt-get and apt-cdrom
An alternative to aptitude is apt-get which is an APT-based command-line tool (described previously
in Section 8.1.2).
apt-get, the APT-based command-line tool for handling packages, provides a simple, safe way to
install and upgrade packages.
To use apt-get, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to set it up, just as for Section 9.1.1.
Then run
apt-get update

followed by
apt-get dist-upgrade

Answer any questions that might come up, and your system will be upgraded. See also the apt-get(8)manual page, as well as Section 8.1.2.
If you want to use CDs/DVDs/BDs to install packages, you can use apt-cdrom. For details, please
see the Release Notes, section ”Adding APT sources from optical media”.
Please note that when you get and install the packages, you’ll still have them kept in your /var
directory hierarchy. To keep your partition from overflowing, remember to delete extra files using
apt-get clean and apt-get autoclean, or to move them someplace else (hint: use apt-move).

9.2 Must I go into single user mode in order to upgrade a package?
No. Packages can be upgraded in place, even in running systems. Debian has a start-stop-daemon
program that is invoked to stop, then restart running process if necessary during a package upgrade.

9.3 Do I have to keep all those .deb archive files on my disk?
No. If you have downloaded the files to your disk then after you have installed the packages, you canremove them from your system, e.g. by running aptitude clean.

9.4 How can I keep a log of the packages I added to the system?
I’d like to know when upgrades and removals have occurredand on which packages!
Passing the --log-option to dpkg makes dpkg log status change updates and actions. It logs both the
dpkg-invokation (e.g.
2005-12-30 18:10:33 install hello 1.3.18 2.1.1-4) and the results (e.g.
42

CHAPTER 9. KEEPING YOUR DEBIAN SYSTEM …

9.5. CAN I AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE THE …

2005-12-30 18:10:35 status installed hello 2.1.1-4) If you’d like to log all your dpkg invocations (even those done using frontends like aptitude), you
could addlog /var/log/dpkg.log

to your /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg. Be sure the created logfile gets rotated periodically. If you’re using
logrotate, this can be achieved by creating a file /etc/logrotate.d/dpkg with the following lines/var/log/dpkg {missingok
notifempty}

More details on dpkg logging can be found in the dpkg(1) manual page.
aptitude logs the package installations, removals, and upgrades that it intends to perform to /var/
log/aptitude. Note that the results of those actions are not recorded in this file!
Another way to record your actions is to run your package management session within the script(1)program.

9.5

Can I automatically update the system?

Yes. You can use cron-apt; this tool updates the system at regular intervals using a cron job. By default
it just updates the package list and downloads new packages, but without installing them.
Note: Automatic upgrade of packages is NOT recommended in testing or unstable systems as thismight bring unexpected behaviour and remove packages without notice.

9.6

I have several machines; how can I download the updates only
one time?

If you have more than one Debian machine on your network, it is useful to use apt-cacher to keep allof your Debian systems up-to-date.
apt-cacher reduces the bandwidth requirements of Debian mirrors by restricting the frequency of
Packages, Releases and Sources file updates from the back end and only doing a single fetch for any file,independently of the actual request from the proxy. apt-cacher automatically builds a Debian HTTP
mirror based on requests which pass through the proxy.
Of course, you can get the same benefit if you are already using a standard caching proxy and all
your systems are configured to use it.

43

Chapter 10

Debian and the kernel
10.1 Can I install and compile a kernel without some Debianspecific tweaking?
Yes.
There’s only one common catch: the Debian C libraries are built with the most recent stable releasesof the kernel headers. If you happen to need to compile a program with kernel headers newer thanthe ones from the stable branch, then you should either upgrade the package containing the headers(linux-libc-dev), or use the new headers from an unpacked tree of the newer kernel. That is, if
the kernel sources are in /usr/src/linux, then you should add -I/usr/src/linux/include/ toyour command line when compiling.

10.2 What tools does Debian provide to build custom kernels?
Users who wish to (or must) build a custom kernel are encouraged to use the Debian package target
included with recent versions of the kernel build system. After configuring the kernel, simply run thefollowing command:
make deb-pkg

The new kernel package will be created in the directory one level above the kernel source tree, andit may be installed using dpkg -i.
Users must separately download the source code for the most recent kernel (or the kernel of theirchoice) from their favorite Linux archive site, unless a linux-source-version package is available(where version stands for the kernel version).

10.3 What special provisions does Debian provide to deal withmodules?
A configuration file containing modules to be manually loaded at boot time is kept at /etc/modules.
However, editing this file is rarely needed.
Other module configuration is kept in the /etc/modprobe.d/ directory. More information about
the format of those files can be found in the modprobe.conf(5) manual page.

10.4 Can I safely de-install an old kernel package, and if so, how?
Yes. The linux-image-NNN .prerm script checks to see whether the kernel you are currently running is
the same as the kernel you are trying to de-install. Therefore you can remove unwanted kernel image
packages using this command:
dpkg --purge linux-image-NNN(replace NNN with your kernel version and revision number, of course)
45

CHAPTER 10. DEBIAN AND THE KERNEL

10.5. WHERE CAN I GET MORE …

10.5 Where can I get more information about Linux packages for
Debian?
Further information is maintained in the Debian Linux Kernel Handbook (https://kernel-team.
pages.debian.net/kernel-handbook/).

46

Chapter 11

Customizing your Debian GNU/Linuxsystem11.1 How can I ensure that all programs use the same paper size?
Install the libpaper1 package, and it will ask you for a system-wide default paper size. This setting
will be kept in the file /etc/papersize.
Users can override the paper size setting using the PAPERSIZE environment variable. For details,
see the manual page papersize(5).

11.2 How can I provide access to hardware peripherals, withoutcompromising security?
Many device files in the /dev directory belong to some predefined groups. For example, /dev/sr0
belongs to the cdrom group.
If you want a certain user to have access to one of these devices, just add the user to the group thedevice belongs to, i.e. do:
adduser user group

This way you won’t have to change the file permissions on the device.
If you do this from within a user’s shell or a GUI environment you have to logout and login again to
become an effective member of that group. To check which groups you belong to run groups.
Notice that, since the introduction of udev if you change the permissions of a hardware peripheral, they might be adjusted for some devices when the system starts; if this happens to the hardware
peripherals you are interested in, you will have to adjust the rules at /etc/udev.

11.3 How do I load a console font on startup the Debian way?
The kbd package supports this, edit the /etc/kbd/config file.

11.4 How can I configure an X11 program’s application defaults?
Debian’s X programs will install their application resource data in the /etc/X11/app-defaults/
directory. If you want to customize X applications globally, put your customizations in those files. They
are marked as configuration files, so their contents will be preserved during upgrades.

11.5 How does a Debian system boot?
Like all Unices, Debian boots up by executing the program init. Like most Linux distributions, a default
Debian system uses systemd as the implementation of init. Traditional System-V style init and other47

CHAPTER 11. CUSTOMIZING YOUR DEBIAN …

11.6. AND HOW ABOUT DEBIAN AND …

methods are also supported. 1
To control the order in which services are started, traditional System-V style Unix systems use runlevels. These are replaced by targets under systemd. To display the default target to which systemd willbring the system, run the command
systemctl get-default

During boot-up, systemd starts the services or other targets listed in the default target file /lib/systemd/system/defa
The files for these services and targets are installed and the service is enabled during Debian package
installation. If you specifically wish not to start a service during boot-up, instead of removing thecorresponding package, you can run the command
systemctl disable service.service

using the name of the service file installed in /lib/systemd/system (usually based on the nameof the package).
The service file /lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service provides an easy way to run customized scripts in the file /etc/rc.local after boot-up, similar to what’s offered on Debian systems
running System-V style init. Beware: this script will fail if it tries to interact with the console such asasking for a user password or trying to clear the screen.
You can check the status of any service by the commandservice package status. To start or stop a service, run
service package startandservice package stop

. The service command works with any init system supported on a Debian system, not just withsystemd. If you however prefer to use the same command on any systemd-supported Linux system, forchecking the status run
systemctl status package.service

to get the same information.
For more information on systemd for Debian, see https://wiki.debian.org/systemd.

11.6 And how about Debian and traditional System V init?
Debian supports booting using traditional System V init, via the sysvinit-core package. The configuration
file for System V init (which is /etc/inittab) specifies that the first script to be executed shouldbe /etc/init.d/rcS. This script runs all of the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ by forking subprocesses toperform initialization such as to check and to mount file systems, to load modules, to start the network
services, to set the clock, and to perform other initialization.
After completing the boot process, init executes all start scripts in a directory specified by thedefault runlevel (this runlevel is given by the entry for id in /etc/inittab). Like most System V
compatible Unices, Linux has 7 runlevels:• 0 (halt the system),
1 In 2014, Debian changed its default init system from System V init to systemd. Debian 8 ”jessie” in April 2015 was thefirst release to ship with systemd as default init. Four decisions (https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte#status) of
the Debian Technical Committee were involved: Bug #727708 (https://lists.debian.org/20140211193904.GX24404@
rzlab.ucr.edu) 2014-02-11: ”The committee decided that the default init system for Linux architectures in jessie should
be systemd.” Bug #746715 (https://lists.debian.org/20140801023630.GF12356@teltox.donarmstrong.com)
2014-08-01: ”The technical committee expects maintainers to continue to support the multiple available init systems”,
and merge reasonable contributions. Bug #746578 (https://lists.debian.org/20141116001628.GO32192@teltox.
donarmstrong.com) 2014-11-15: ”The committee decided that systemd-shim should be the first listed alternative dependencyof libpam-systemd instead of systemd-sysv.” This decision made it easier to keep running a non-systemd Debian system. Bug#762194 (https://lists.debian.org/21592.61064.527547.410074@chiark.greenend.org.uk)2017-11-04: ”On
automatic init system switching on upgrade”

48

CHAPTER 11. CUSTOMIZING YOUR DEBIAN …

11.7. AND ARE THERE YET OTHER WAYS OF …

• 1 (single-user mode),• 2 through 5 (various multi-user modes), and• 6 (reboot the system).
Debian systems come with id=2, which indicates that the default runlevel will be ’2’ when themulti-user state is entered, and the scripts in /etc/rc2.d/ will be run.
Debian uses dependency-based boot ordering through insserv, using the LSB headers in each script
under /etc/init.d/, as well as parallel concurrent booting through the use of startpar to speed up
the boot process.
The scripts in any of the directories, /etc/rcN.d/ are just symbolic links back to scripts in /etc/init.d/.
However, the names of the files in each of the /etc/rcN.d/ directories are selected to indicate the way
the scripts in /etc/init.d/ will be run. Specifically, before entering any runlevel, all the scripts
beginning with ’K’ are run; these scripts kill services. Then all the scripts beginning with ’S’ are run;these scripts start services. The two-digit number following the ’K’ or ’S’ indicates the order in which
the script is run. Lower numbered scripts are executed first.
This approach works because the scripts in /etc/init.d/ all take an argument which can be either
̀
̀
̀
̀
̀
start’,
stop’,
reload’,restart’or force-reload’
and will then do the task indicated by the argument.
These scripts can be used even after a system has been booted, to control various processes.
̀For example, with the argument reload’
the command/etc/init.d/sendmail reload

sends the sendmail daemon a signal to reread its configuration file.
Note that invoke-rc.d should not be used to call the /etc/init.d/ scripts, service should be usedinstead.

11.7 And are there yet other ways of booting a Debian system?
If you do like System V init, but don’t like the /etc/rc?.d/* links, you could install the file-rc package.
That will convert the links into one single configuration file /etc/runlevel.conf instead.
If you like neither System V nor systemd, you might like openrc or runit or daemontools.

11.8 How does the package management system deal with packages that contain configuration files for other packages?
Some users wish to create, for example, a new server by installing a group of Debian packages and alocally generated package consisting of configuration files. This is not generally a good idea, because
dpkg will not know about those configuration files if they are in a different package, and may write
conflicting configurations when one of the initial ”group” of packages is upgraded.
Instead, create a local package that modifies the configuration files of the ”group” of Debian packagesof interest. Then dpkg and the rest of the package management system will see that the files have been
modified by the local ”sysadmin” and will not try to overwrite them when those packages are upgraded.

11.9 How do I override a file installed by a package, so that adifferent version can be used instead?
Suppose a sysadmin or local user wishes to use a program ”login-local” rather than the program ”login”
provided by the Debian login package.
Do not:• Overwrite /bin/login with login-local.
The package management system will not know about this change, and will simply overwrite yourcustom /bin/login whenever login (or any package that provides /bin/login) is installed or
updated.
Rather, do
49

CHAPTER 11. CUSTOMIZING YOUR DEBIAN …

11.10. HOW CAN I HAVE MY LOCALLY-BUILT …

• Execute:dpkg-divert --divert /bin/login.debian /bin/login

in order to cause all future installations of the Debian login package to write the file /bin/login
to /bin/login.debian instead.
• Then execute:cp login-local /bin/login

to move your own locally-built program into place.
Run dpkg-divert --list to see which diversions are currently active on your system.
Details are given in the manual page dpkg-divert(8).

11.10 How can I have my locally-built package included in the listof available packages that the package management systemknows about?
Execute the command:
dpkg-scanpackages BIN_DIR OVERRIDE_FILE [PATHPREFIX] > my_Packages

where:• BIN-DIR is a directory where Debian archive files (which usually have an extension of ”.deb”) arestored.
• OVERRIDE_FILE is a file that is edited by the distribution maintainers and is usually stored on a
Debian archive at indices/override.main.gz for the Debian packages in the ”main” distribution. You can ignore this for local packages.
• PATHPREFIX is an optional string that can be prepended to the my_Packages file being produced.
Once you have built the file my_Packages, tell the package management system about it by using
the command:
dpkg --merge-avail my_Packages

If you are using APT, you can add the local repository to your sources.list(5) file, too.

11.11 Some users like mawk, others like gawk; some like vim,
others like elvis; some like trn, others like tin; how does
Debian support diversity?
There are several cases where two packages provide two different versions of a program, both of which
provide the same core functionality. Users might prefer one over another out of habit, or because theuser interface of one package is somehow more pleasing than the interface of another. Other users on
the same system might make a different choice.
Debian uses a ”virtual” package system to allow system administrators to choose (or let users choose)
their favorite tools when there are two or more that provide the same basic functionality, yet satisfy
package dependency requirements without specifying a particular package.
For example, there might exist two different versions of newsreaders on a system. The news server
package might ’recommend’ that there exist some news reader on the system, but the choice of tin or
trn is left up to the individual user. This is satisfied by having both the tin and trn packages provide
the virtual package news-reader. Which program is invoked is determined by a link pointing froma file with the virtual package name /etc/alternatives/news-reader to the selected file, e.g.,/usr/bin/trn.
50

CHAPTER 11. CUSTOMIZING YOUR DEBIAN …

11.11. SOME USERS LIKE MAWK, OTHERS …

A single link is insufficient to support full use of an alternate program; normally, manual pages,
and possibly other supporting files must be selected as well. The Perl script update-alternatives
provides a way of ensuring that all the files associated with a specified package are selected as a systemdefault.
̀For example, to check what executables provide x-window-manager’,run:
update-alternatives --display x-window-manager

If you want to change it, run:
update-alternatives --config x-window-manager

And follow the instructions on the screen (basically, press the number next to the entry you’d likebetter).
If a package doesn’t register itself as a window manager for some reason (file a bug if it’s in error),or if you use a window manager from /usr/local directory, the selections on screen won’t contain yourpreferred entry. You can update the link through command line options, like this:update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-window-manager \x-window-manager /usr/local/bin/wmaker-cvs 50

̀The first argument to --install’option is the symlink that points to /etc/alternatives/NAME, where
NAME is the second argument. The third argument is the program to which /etc/alternatives/NAME
should point to, and the fourth argument is the priority (larger value means the alternative will moreprobably get picked automatically).
To remove an alternative you added, simply run:
update-alternatives --remove x-window-manager /usr/local/bin/wmaker-cvs

51

Chapter 12

Getting support for Debian
GNU/Linux
12.1 What other documentation exists on and for a Debian system?
• Installation instructions for the current release: see https://www.debian.org/releases/
stable/installmanual.
• The Debian GNU/Linux reference covers many aspects of system administration through shellcommand examples. Basic tutorials, tips, and other information are provided for many different
topics ranging from system administration to programming.
Get it from the debian-reference package, or at https://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals#
quick-reference.
• The Debian Policy manual documents the policy requirements for the distribution, i.e. the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the operating system etc. It also
includes the technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution, and documents the basic technical aspects of Debian binary and source packages.
Get it from the debian-policy package, or at https://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#
policy.
• Documentation developed by the Debian Documentation Project. It is available at https://www.debian.org/doc and includes user guides, administration guides and security guides forthe Debian GNU/Linux operating system.
• Documentation on installed Debian packages: Most packages have files that are unpacked into
/usr/share/doc/PACKAGE.
• Documentation on the Linux project: The Debian package doc-linux installs all of the mostrecent versions of the HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs from the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org/).
̀• Unix-style man’pages: Most commands have manual pages written in the style of the original̀Unix ’man’ files. For instance, to see the manual page for the command ls’,
execute man ls.
Execute man man for more information on finding and viewing manual pages.
New Debian users should note that the ’man’ pages of many general system commands are notavailable until they install these packages:– man-db, which contains the man program itself, and other programs for manipulating themanual pages.
– manpages, which contains the system manual pages. (see Section 5.9).
53

CHAPTER 12. GETTING SUPPORT FOR DEBIAN …

12.2. ARE THERE ANY ON-LINE RESOURCES …

̀• GNU-style info’
pages: User documentation for many commands, particularly GNU tools, is avail̀̀
able not in man’pages, but in info’
files which can be read by the GNU tool info, by runningM-x info within GNU Emacs, or with some other Info page viewer.
̀
Its main advantage over the original man’pages is that it is a hypertext system. It does not
require the WWW, however; info can be run from a plain text console. It was designed by
Richard Stallman and preceded the WWW.
Note that you may access a lot of documentation on your system by using a WWW browser, through̀̀̀̀dwww’,
dhelp’or doccentral’commands, found in respective packages, or by using yelp’.

12.2 Are there any on-line resources for discussing Debian?
Yes. In fact, the main method of support Debian provides to our users is by the way of e-mail. We’ll
give some details on that, and mention some other useful resources. Even more resources are listed at
the Debian Support webpage (https://www.debian.org/support).

12.2.1 Mailing lists
There are a lot of Debian-related mailing lists (https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/).
On a system with the doc-debian package installed there is a complete list of mailing lists in/usr/share/doc/debian/mailing-lists.txt.
Debian mailing lists are named following the pattern debian-list-subject. Examples are debianannounce, debian-user, debian-news. To subscribe to any list debian-list-subject, send mail todebian-list-subject-request@lists.debian.org with the word ”subscribe” in the Subject: header. Be
sure to remember to add -request to the e-mail address when using this method to subscribe or unsubscribe. Otherwise your e-mail will go to the list itself, which could be embarrassing or annoying,depending on your point of view.
You can subscribe to mailing lists using the WWW form (https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/
subscribe). You can also un-subscribe using a WWW form (https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/
unsubscribe).
The list manager’s e-mail address is listmaster@lists.debian.org, in case you have any trouble.
The mailing lists are public forums. All e-mails sent to the lists are also copied to the public archive,
for anybody (even non-subscribers) to browse or search. Please make sure you never send any confidential or unlicensed material to the lists. This includes things like e-mail addresses. Of particular note is
the fact that spammers have been known to abuse e-mail addresses posted to our mailing lists. See theMailing Lists Privacy policy (https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#disclaimer) for more
information.
Archives of the Debian mailing lists are available via WWW at https://lists.debian.org/.
12.2.1.1 What is the code of conduct for the mailing lists?
When using the Debian mailing lists, please follow these rules:• Do not send spam. See the Debian mailing list advertising policy (https://www.debian.org/
MailingLists/#ads).
• Do not flame; it is not polite. The people developing Debian are all volunteers, donating theirtime, energy and money in an attempt to bring the Debian project together.
• Do not use foul language; besides, some people receive the lists via packet radio, where swearing
is illegal.
• Make sure that you are using the proper list. Never post your (un)subscription requests to themailing list itself.1• See section Section 12.5 for notes on reporting bugs.
1 Use the debian-list-subject-REQUEST@lists.debian.org address for that.

54

CHAPTER 12. GETTING SUPPORT FOR DEBIAN …

12.2.212.3. IS THERE A QUICK WAY TO SEARCH …

Web forum

Debian User Forums (http://forums.debian.net/) provides web forums on which you can submit
questions about Debian and have them answered by other users. (It is not an officially part of the Debian
project.)

12.2.3

Wiki

Solutions to common problems, howtos, guides, tips and other documentation can be found at theconstantly changing Debian Wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/).

12.2.4Maintainers

Users can address questions to individual package maintainers using e-mail. To reach a maintainer of a
package called xyz, send e-mail to xyz@packages.debian.org.

12.2.5Usenet newsgroups

Users should post non-Debian-specific questions to one of the Linux USENET groups, which are named
comp.os.linux.* or linux.*. There are several lists of Linux Usenet newsgroups and other related resources on the WWW, e.g. on the Linux Online (https://www.linux.org/docs/usenet.html)
and LinuxJournal (http://www.linuxjournal.com/helpdesk.php) sites.

12.3 Is there a quick way to search for information on Debian
GNU/Linux?
There is a variety of search engines that serve documentation related to Debian:• Debian WWW search site (https://search.debian.org/).
• Google Groups (https://groups.google.com/): a search engine for newsgroups.
For example, to find out what experiences people have had with finding drivers for NVIDIA graphic
cards under Debian, try searching the phrase NVIDIA Linux driver. This will show you all theposts that contain these strings, i.e. those where people discussed these topics. If you add Debianto those search strings, you’ll also get the posts specifically related to Debian.
• Any of the common web spidering engines, such as DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/)
or Google (https://www.google.com/), as long as you use the right search terms.
For example, searching on the string ”evince” gives a more detailed explanation of this packagethan the brief description field in its control file.

12.4 Are there logs of known bugs?
Reports on unsolved (and closed) issues are publicly available: Debian promissed to do so by stating”We will not hide problems” in the Debian Social Contract (https://www.debian.org/social_
contract).
The Debian GNU/Linux distribution has a bug tracking system (BTS) which files details of bugs
reported by users and developers. Each bug is given a number, and is kept on file. Once it has been
dealt with, it is marked as such.
Copies of this information are available at https://www.debian.org/Bugs/.
A mail server provides access to the bug tracking system database via e-mail. In order to get the
instructions, send an e-mail to request@bugs.debian.org with ”help” in the body.
55

CHAPTER 12. GETTING SUPPORT FOR DEBIAN …

12.5. HOW DO I REPORT A BUG IN DEBIAN?

12.5 How do I report a bug in Debian?
If you have found a bug in Debian, please read the instructions for reporting a bug in Debian. These
instructions can be obtained in one of several ways:• From the WWW. A copy of the instructions is shown at https://www.debian.org/Bugs/
Reporting.
• On any Debian system with the doc-debian package installed. The instructions are in the file/usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt.
You can use the package reportbug that will guide you through the reporting process and mail themessage to the proper address, with some extra details about your system added automatically. It will
also show you a list of bugs already reported to the package you are reporting against in case your bug
has been reported previously, so that you can add additional information to the existing bug report.
Expect to get an automatic acknowledgement of your bug report. It will also be automatically given
a bug tracking number, entered into the bug log and forwarded to the debian-bugs-dist mailing list.

56

Chapter 13

Contributing to the Debian Project
Donations (https://www.debian.org/donations) of time (to develop new packages, maintainexisting packages, or provide user support), resources (to mirror the package and WWW archives), andmoney (to pay for new testbeds as well as hardware for the archives) can help the project. See also How
can you help Debian? (https://www.debian.org/intro/help).

13.1 How can I become a Debian member/Debian developer?
The development of Debian is open to all, and new users with the right skills and/or the willingness tolearn are needed to maintain existing packages which have been ”orphaned” by their previous maintainers, to develop new packages, to write documentation, to do translation work, to help with the Debian
website, to provide user support, etc.
The description of becoming a Debian member can be found at the New Member’s Corner (https://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint) at the Debian web site.

13.2 How can I contribute resources to the Debian project?
Since the project aims to make a substantial body of software rapidly and easily accessible throughout
the globe, mirrors are needed. It is desirable but not absolutely necessary to mirror all of the archive.
Please visit the Debian mirror size (https://www.debian.org/mirror/size) page for informationon the disk space requirements.
Most of the mirroring is accomplished entirely automatically by scripts, without any interaction.
However, the occasional glitch or system change occurs which requires human intervention.
If you have a high-speed connection to the Internet, the resources to mirror all or part of the distribution, and are willing to take the time (or find someone) who can provide regular maintenance of thesystem, then please contact debian-admin@lists.debian.org.

13.3 How can I contribute financially to the Debian project?
Donations from sponsors allow Debian to have machines, as well as other hardware, organise conferences and development sprints, amongst other things. For more information please visit Debian Donations (https://www.debian.org/donations). The page also lists the different methods that canbe used to donate.
One can make individual donations to organizations that are critical to the development of the Debian
project. The main organization is Software in the Public Interest, incorporated in the United States, butthere are others.

13.3.1

Software in the Public Interest

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is an IRS 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in the UnitedStates. The purpose of the organization is to develop and distribute free software.
57

CHAPTER 13. CONTRIBUTING TO THE DEBIAN …

13.3. HOW CAN I CONTRIBUTE FINANCIALLY …

It encourages programmers to use the GNU General Public License or other licenses that allow free
redistribution and use of software, and hardware developers to distribute documentation that will allow
device drivers to be written for their product.
SPI acts as a fiscal sponsor to many free and open source projects. The Debian project has been an
associate project since the organization’s creation.
SPI can be reached at: https://www.spi-inc.org/.

13.3.2 Other organizations
There are a number of organizations created in different countries that hold assets in trust for Debian.
The donations page (https://www.debian.org/donations) lists the trusted organizations individuals can donate to. At the time of this writing there are two of them: the Debian France Association(https://france.debian.net/) (in France), and debian.ch (https://debian.ch/) (Switzerland
and the Principality of Liechtenstein). Additional affiliate organizations in other countries are listed in
Organizations (https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor/Organizations) page in the Debian Wiki.

58

Chapter 14

Redistributing Debian GNU/Linux in acommercial product14.1 Can I make and sell Debian CDs?
Go ahead. You do not need permission to distribute anything we have released, so that you can master
your CD as soon as the beta-test ends. You do not have to pay us anything. Of course, all CD manufacturers must honor the licenses of the programs in Debian. For example, many of the programs arelicensed under the GPL, which requires you to distribute their source code.
Also, we will publish a list of CD manufacturers who donate money, software, and time to the Debian
project, and we will encourage users to buy from manufacturers who donate, so it is good advertising
to make donations.

14.2 Can Debian be packaged with non-free software?
Yes. While all the main components of Debian are free software, we provide a non-free directory for
programs that are not freely redistributable.
CD manufacturers may be able to distribute the programs we have placed in that directory, dependingon the license terms or their private arrangements with the authors of those software packages. CD
manufacturers can also distribute the non-free software they get from other sources on the same CD. This
is nothing new: free and commercial software are distributed on the same CD by many manufacturers
now. Of course we still encourage software authors to release the programs they write as free software.

14.3 I am making a special Linux distribution for a ”vertical market”. Can I use Debian GNU/Linux for the guts of a Linuxsystem and add my own applications on top of it?
Yes. Debian-derived distributions are being created both in close cooperation with the Debian project
itself and by external parties. One can use the Debian Pure Blends (https://www.debian.org/
blends/) framework to work together with Debian; DebianEdu/Skolelinux (https://wiki.debian.
org/DebianEdu/) is one such project.
There are several other Debian-derived distributions already on the market, such as grml, LMDE
(Linux Mint Debian Edition), Knoppix and Ubuntu, that are targeted at a different kind of audience thanthe original Debian GNU/Linux is, but use most of our components in their product.
Debian also provides a mechanism to allow developers and system administrators to install local
versions of selected files in such a way that they will not be overwritten when other packages are
upgraded. This is discussed further in the question on Section 11.9.
59

CHAPTER 14. REDISTRIBUTING DEBIAN …

14.4. CAN I PUT MY COMMERCIAL PROGRAM …

14.4 Can I put my commercial program in a Debian ”package” sothat it installs effortlessly on any Debian system?
Go right ahead. The package tool is free software; the packages may or may not be free software, it can
install them all.

60

Chapter 15

Changes expected in the next major
release of DebianWith each new release, the Debian project tries to focus on a set of topics. These are known as ”Release
Goals” and they are all described in https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/. Please note thatthe following sections might not be fully up-to-date, please refer to the Wiki for more information andthe up-to-date status of these goals.

15.1 Hardening the system
It is a goal for the Debian project to ensure that any system installed is hardened and secure against
attacks. There are several ways to achieve this, which include:• Improve programs’ security by compiling them with Security Hardening Build Flags (https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/SecurityHardeningBuildFlags) in order to enablevarious protections against known security issues,• Improve the default system configuration to make it less vulnerable to attacks (both local or remote),• Enable security features delivered by new versions of the kernel.
All of these are done in an ongoing basis. For the first item, a set of security hardening build flags that
try to prevent known attacks such as stack smashing, predictable locations of values in memory, etc. isused. The target is to cover at least all packages that are part of the basic installation as well as packages
that had to be updated through a Security Advisory since 2006. As of this writing, around 400 packages
have been modified since this effort was first started. All the issues are tracked in the BTS (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=goal-hardening;users=hardening-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org).

15.2 Extended support for non-English users
Debian already has very good support for non-English users, see Section 5.9.
We hope to find people who will provide support for even more languages, and translate programsand documents. Many programs and Debian-specific documents already support internationalization,so we need message catalogs translators. However, still some programs remain to be properly internationalized.
The GNU Translation Project ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS works on internationalizing the GNU programs and different projects, such as the Desktop environments GNOME or KDE
have their own translation teams. The goal of Debian is not to replace or to repeat the work done bythese projects, indeed, Debian benefits from the work done by translators in these projects. However,there are still many programs which are not in the scope of those projects and which are translated
within Debian.
Previous Debian releases have focused in topics such as:61

CHAPTER 15. CHANGES EXPECTED IN THE …

15.3. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE DEBIAN …

• I18n support in all debconf-using packages: Packages using the Debian configuration management
must allow for translation of all messages displayed to the user during package configuration.
• I18n support for package descriptions: Update package management frontends to use the translated descriptions of packages.
• UTF-8 debian/changelog and debian/control. This way, e.g. names of people from asian countries
can get typeset the right way in changelogs.
• I18n support in the Debian Installer including full support for some languages that require the useof the graphical interface.

15.3 Improvements in the Debian Installer
Lots of work has been done on the Debian Installer, resulting in major improvements. We’ll mention
just two of them here.
Starting the installer from Microsoft Windows: It is now possible to start the installer directly fromMicrosoft Windows without the need to change BIOS settings. Upon insertion of a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM
or USB stick, an autorun program will be started, offering a step-by-step process to start the DebianInstaller.

15.4 More architectures
Complete Debian system on other architectures. Notice that even though some architectures are dropped
for a given release, there still might be a way to install and upgrade using the latest sid.

15.5 More kernels
In addition to Debian GNU/Hurd, Debian is being ported also to BSD kernels, namely to FreeBSD(https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/). This port runs on both AMD64 (”kfreebsdamd64”) and traditional Intel (”kfreebsd-i386”).

62

Chapter 16

General information about the FAQ
16.1 Authors
The first edition of this FAQ was made and maintained by J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) and Chuck Stickelman.
Authors of the rewritten Debian GNU/Linux FAQ are Susan G. Kleinmann and Sven Rudolph. Afterthem, the FAQ was maintained by Santiago Vila and, later, by Josip Rodin. The current maintainer is
Javier Fernandez-Sanguino.
Parts of the information came from:• The Debian-1.1 release announcement, by Bruce Perens (https://perens.com/),• the Linux FAQ, by Ian Jackson (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/),• Debian Mailing Lists Archives (https://lists.debian.org/),• the dpkg programmers’ manual and the Debian Policy manual (see Section 12.1),• many developers, volunteers, and beta testers,• the flaky memories of its authors. :-)• and the Choosing a Debian distribution FAQ (http://KamarajuKusumanchi.github.io/choosing_debian_distribution/choosing_debian_distribution.html), which Kamaraju Kusumanchi graciously released under the GPL, so it could be included as a new chapter(see Chapter 3).
The authors would like to thank all those who helped make this document possible.
All warranties are disclaimed. All trademarks are property of their respective trademark owners.

16.2 Feedback

Comments and additions to this document are always welcome. Please send e-mail to doc-debian@packages.debian.oror submit a wishlist bug report against the debian-faq (https://bugs.debian.org/debian-faq)
package.

16.3 Availability
The latest version of this document can be viewed on the Debian WWW pages at https://www.
debian.org/doc/FAQ/.
It is also available for download in plain text, HTML, and PDF formats at https://www.debian.
org/doc/user-manuals#faq. Also, there are several translations there.
This document is available in the debian-faq package. Translations are available in debian-faq-de,
debian-faq-fr and other packages.
The original XML files used to create this document are also available in debian-faq’s source package, or in GIT at: git@salsa.debian.org:ddp-team/debian-faq.git and https://salsa.
debian.org/ddp-team/debian-faq.
63

CHAPTER 16. GENERAL INFORMATION …

16.4. DOCUMENT FORMAT

16.4 Document format
This document was written using the DocBook XML DTD. This system enables us to create files in avariety of formats from one source, e.g. this document can be viewed as HTML, plain text, TeX DVI,
PostScript, PDF, or GNU info.

64

IndexP
packages
apt, 37
apt-doc, 36, 37
apt-file, 39
apt-move, 42
aptitude-doc, 38
binutils, 27
build-essential, 18
daemontools, 19, 49
dbndns, 19
debian-faq, 63
debian-faq-de, 63
debian-faq-fr, 63
debian-policy, 53
debian-reference, 53
debmake-doc, 33
djbdns, 19
doc-debian, 54, 56
doc-linux, 53
dpkg-dev, 33
ekiga, 20
ezmlm-idx, 19
fakeroot, 33
file-rc, 49
gcc, 27
gnash, 20
googleearth-package, 20
kbd, 47
kernel-package, 18
labplot, 8
libc6, 32
libpaper1, 47
linux-libc-dev, 45
linux-source-version, 45
login, 49, 50
lsb-release, 10
maint-guide, 33
mlmmj, 19
ndiswrapper, 20
news-reader, 50
openrc, 49
publicfile-installer, 19
qmail, 19
reportbug, 56
runit, 49
swfdec, 20
tin, 50
trn, 50
ucspi-tcp, 19

65