[OT] Debian Policy (was Re: [Mimedefang] Re: Quarantine location)

[Gordon Henderson]

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, David F. Skoll wrote:

> Kris Deugau wrote:
>
> > Maybe, maybe not.  Debian package maintainers seem to delight in "Doing
> > Things Differently" for a lot of packages, but maybe that's just my
> > background learning all of the RedHat-isms first.  <g>
>
> Tell me about it!  Two of the pieces of software we rely on are
> Sendmail and PostgreSQL.  The Debian packages for both of those
> products are... interesting, shall we say.  Convoluted, complicated,
> with insane startup scripts, configuration options,... ouch!  My head
> hurts!
>
> We still use and like Debian around here, but we grumble. :-)

So what I do and just use Debian as a bootstrap mechanism - put sendmail
on hold once it's installed, then just compile up a standard sendmail,
mimedefang, SA, *sql, apache, php, etc. rather than use the packages. Bit
more to look after, but most of the rest is generally ok - eg. the -dev
versions of various libraries, perl modules, etc. and apt-get update will
keep the major security stuff up to date (ssh, etc.)

(However my background of doing this came from having to maintain a whole
raft of different *nix type systems while trying to keep as much similar
between boxes to make my life easier. These days it's almost entirely
Debian, but old habits die hard)

Gordon