[CS-FSLUG] Why You Might Be Using Linux in 2009

[Stephen J. McCracken]

> Install a server with the minimal services needed, and only install
> patches that are necessary in your environment (admittedly this is
> easier in some distros than others--debian has a separate repository
> for security patches).

Just for information's sake, I just did this on one of my Debian Etch
servers.  The first run of apt-get was with the main and security repos
enabled.  The second only the security repo.  You can see the difference
in what would have been upgraded:

db-samba:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common dpkg dselect
  libc6 libc6-i686 libcupsys2 libpq4 linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 locales tzdata
13 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 31.5MB of archives.
After unpacking 437kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.
db-samba:~# vi /etc/apt/sources.list
db-samba:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libcupsys2 linux-image-2.6.18-6-686
2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 16.6MB of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.

sjm