Notes about the installation and maintenance of Debian

This chapter contains notes of things I discover while I work with Debian, nothing very constructed but it should allow me, and perhaps some of you, to avoid doing twice the same errors.

• dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 to add the option compose:menu to the XkbOptions of the keyboard section. Allows to type any kind of letter (look at /usr/lib/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose).
• Read and apply /usr/share/doc/konsole/README.linux.console
• Read and apply /usr/share/doc/xprt-xprintorg/README.printing-problems.gz
• If something like kdecore (KIconLoader): WARNING: Icon directory /foo group bar is not valid appears in file ~/.xsession-errors a lot of times, follow these instructions:

  run in a shell (I cannot find this on any menu): kdebugdialog --fullmode
  select: debug area: 264 kdecore (KIconLoader)
  Change the Warning Output to "None"
  select: OK
  

  (from bug number Bug#253127)
• If, with some Sound Blaster cards and ALSA driver snd-ens1371, you get some horrible noises when starting KDE, start the Sound Mixer (kmix); hack the advanced option, and shut-off IEC958. Do it for each user. (see Bug#239575).
• Recently, when trying to use Marillat's depots, I got an error 'W: GPG error: ftp://ftp.nerim.net etch Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 07DC563D1F41B907'. I just called two commands, and the problem was over:

          gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907
  (or "gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring trustedkeys.gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907" but I don't think it's necessary.)
          gpg --armor --export 1F41B907 | sudo apt-key add -
  

• In order to get your computer registered in Dynamic DNS when getting an address from the DHCP server (we have this one at work), add a line like send host-name "hostname"; to /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf. A short hostname (without DNS domain) seems to be sufficient to get it working after a hearty /etc/init.d/networking restart.
  After this manipulation, host hostname should return your IP address (this can be useful to setup a small server).
• Mozilla started to hang repeatedly, it looks like it was due to IPv6. I edited /etc/modprobe.d/aliases and replaced alias net-pf-10 ipv6 through alias net-pf-10 off. End of the problems!

Debian Repositories

I have some Debian repositories, which you can use by adding following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://eric.lavar.de/comp/linux/debian/ distro/
deb-src http://eric.lavar.de/comp/linux/debian/ distro/

where distro can be one of experimental, unstable, testing or ubuntu. Currently I'm not very consequent with those names, but generally my packages go from experimental to unstable to testing, and I tend to use ubuntu if the package needs adaptation compared to Debian.
Anyway, once you've done this, also call as root:

	wget -O - http://eric.lavar.de/comp/linux/debian/deb_zorglub_s_bawue_de.pubkey \
		| apt-key add -
  

pub   1024D/869D2871 2004-02-17
      Key fingerprint = 98FB 95CD 6C40 4DF7 E758  601D 27CD 3F36 869D 2871
uid                  Eric Lavarde <deb@lavar.de>
sig 3        869D2871 2009-03-29  Eric Lavarde <deb@lavar.de>
uid                  Eric Lavarde <deb@zorglub.s.bawue.de>
sig 3        869D2871 2004-02-17  Eric Lavarde <deb@lavar.de>
uid                  Eric Lavarde <deb@lavarde.eu>
sig 3        869D2871 2009-03-29  Eric Lavarde <deb@lavar.de>
sub   1024g/2DE1125A 2004-02-17
sig          869D2871 2004-02-17  Eric Lavarde <deb@lavar.de>
  

Once this is done, update your repository cache:

	aptitude update
  

and you're ready to install my packages (mainly FreeMind or Freeplane).

Debian links

Beside the official ones:

• Debian Administration
• Unofficial APT repositories
• Debian Unofficial
• Debian Backports (for Sarge).

I also described the installation of Debian on an HP nc6000.

[Maison/Home/Heim] [Linux]