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Debian Unstable

From dankwiki

Update 2019-03-30: wow, this page sure is out of date! My next install is going to be Arch anyway. It's been a fantastic 20 years, Debian, and I'm happy to write you a letter of recommendation.

Installing Sid

  • Acquire the daily businesscard ISO.
    • These won't work from time to time, especially when base packages are being upgraded (the installer will expect a version which is no longer available)
  • Prepare external firmware, if necessary
  • Boot the ISO, selecting an Expert install

Post-install

sudo

  • Install sudo. Edit /etc/sudoers (using visudo) to allow the sudo group to run all commands without a password:

%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

  • Add user account to sudo group

debconf

  • dpkg-reconfigure debconf, set minimum priority to Low
  • dpkg-reconfigure -a, reconfiguring all debconf questions

boot process

  • Edit /etc/default/rcS, enabling FSCKFIX, VERBOSE, RAMRUN, RAMLOCK
  • Edit /etc/default/grub, removing "quiet" from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
    • Rerun update-grub
  • Ensure LABEL or UUID directives are being used in /etc/fstab
    • If not, retrieve them using blkid, and replace the /dev references
  • Install mcelog. Edit /etc/default/mcelog, adding "--syslog_error" to DAEMON_OPTS.
  • Install mingetty. Open /etc/inittab and convert 'getty 38400' to 'mingetty'.

networking-related

  • Install ntpd. Edit /etc/default/ntp, changing NTPD_OPTS to '-g -x'.
    • This allows the clock to be arbitrarily set once (presumably on startup), without slew delay
  • Unless the machine is intended as a mail server, set up a smarthost with ssmtp, purging Postfix/Exim
  • Install openssh-server. Disable password-based authentication (use only keys).
    • Debian already ships OpenSSH configured to use Protocol 2 only.
    • Optionally disable reverse DNS lookups: UseDNS no
    • Optionally disable password-based auth: PasswordAuthentication no
  • Add iptables rules to /etc/network/interfaces
    • Filter unused RFC 1938 addresses via the RAW table and ipset
    • Filter INVALID and UNKNOWN states via the INPUT table (if appropriate) (requires connection tracking)
  • Enable IPv4 and IPv6 forwarding, if appropriate, in /etc/sysctl.conf:
    • net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
    • net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1 (note: disables Stateless Address Autoconfiguration!)

Multiuser

  • Clone my home directory from https://github.com/dankamongmen/dankhome.git
  • Set a color for the local machine in .pcolor
    • This is based on the binary bin/color, and hooks to PS1 in .bashrc
  • Install compiz and gdm3.
  • If SSH keys will be homed on this (hopefully local) machine...
    • Install libpam-ssh, and configure it
    • Recently, this can be done entirely inside of debconf -- no editing of PAM configs by hand
  • Remove info and install pinfo
  • FIXME plenty more..

External Applications

Perforce

  • Grab the amd64 Perforce binaries
  • Unpack the P4V tarball to local/
  • Update the local/ symlink: ln -sf abspath local/p4
  • Set up the p4 command line utility: chmod 775 p4 and mv p4 local/p4/bin

Flash

  • So long as there's no native 64-bit Linux client, you can either...
    • Use the GNU Gnash plugin, which works kinda
    • Use the 32-bit player with nspluginwrapper, from Debian Multimedia

Debian Multimedia