Chapter 8. Keeping your Debian system up to date

48

The

mirror

program is generally useful for updating local copies of remote directory trees.

The files fetched need not be Debian files. (Since

mirror

is a Perl script, it can also run on

non Unix systems.) Though the

mirror

program provides mechanisms for excluding files

names of which match user specified strings, this program is most useful when the objective is

to download whole directory trees, rather than selected packages.

8.2.4 dpkg mountable

dpkg mountable adds an access method called `mountable' to dselect's list, which allows you

to install from any file system specified in /etc/fstab. For example, the archive could be a

normal hard disk partition or an NFS server, which it will automatically mount and umount

for you if necessary.

It also has some extra features not found in the standard dselect methods, such as provision

for a local file tree (either parallel to the main distribution or totally separate), and only getting

packages which are required, rather than the time consuming recursive directory scan, as well

as logging of all dpkg actions in the install method.

8.3 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 nec 

essary during a package upgrade.

8.4 Do I have to keep all those .deb archive files on my disk?

No. If you have downloaded the files to your disk (which is not absolutely necessary, see above

for the description of dpkg ftp), then after you have installed the packages, you can remove

them from your system.

8.5 How can I keep a log of the packages I added to the system?

dpkg

keeps a record of the packages that have been unpacked, configured, removed, and/or

purged, but does not (currently) keep a log of terminal activity that occurred while a package

was being so manipulated.

The simplest way to work around this is to run your

dpkg

/

dselect

/

apt get

/whatever

sessions within the

script(1)

program.