[vox-tech] base-config is gone

[Ken Bloom]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 09:07:26AM -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 08:59:20AM -0800, Bob Scofield wrote:
> > I've been having trouble lately with a couple of my Debian sources; U.C.S.C. 
> > and the University of Arizona.  So I decided to delete them with vi, and then
> > add a couple of more with base-config.
> 
> I'm not directly familiar with base-config, though I've no doubt used it
> in the past. :^)
> 
> > 
> > But base-config is gone.  I've done some Googling and learned that base-config 
> > was taken out of Sid.  I'm using testing, but it's just not here.

base-config is the configuration questions that you would be asked
after rebooting, prior to etch. It has been recently removed in favor
of a more RedHat or Mandrake style installation of asking all of the
installation questions before rebooting, and (I believe) installing
all of the packages before rebooting. (I believe this allowed them to
remove a hack in how they were installing packages before)

I'm not sure what they're doing with tasksel, but surely it does not
include the old base-config functionality such as mirror selection and
user creation. Tasksel still only lets you pick common sets of
packages for installation like "Desktop environment". I've always
thought tasksel presented a rather useless list of tasks, and
everything you can accomplish in tasksel can also be done in aptitude.

> >  So here are three questions:
> > 
> > 1)  Is there an easy way to add sources without base-config?
> 
>   * Edit /etc/apt/sources.list manually...?  Or is that 'easy' enough fer ya?

Agreed. You can look at http://www.debian.org/mirror/list for a
current list of mirror sites. You can also look at using apt-spy to
select the fastest mirror for your connection.

> 
> > 2)  How many sources do people think one needs?  I've got two right now.  Is 
> > there a reason for 3 or 4?

You should only need one main mirror listed, except possibly as a
backup if you can't get DNS info for the main mirror (which you almost
never need to worry about).

apt-get DOES NOT pull packages from multiple mirrors simultaneously
when they're all in the main distribution -- they don't want everyone
being greedy and overloading their mirrors -- and I read a thread on
debian-devel to the effect that they refuse to change apt-get to slurp
from multiple mirrors.

> > 3)  Is there a tool  available for doing the other things base-config used to
> > do (but which I can't remember)?
> 
> I can't remember what base-config did.  I have a hunch tasksel doesn't do
> everything base-config did, but I'm not familiar enough to know for sure.
> I'll leave it up to a Google search and/or other LUGOD readers to get you
> your answer! :^)

Base-config did things like setting the system clock, and configuring
the timezone, setting the root password, creating the initial users,
and selecting mirrors.

We've discussed mirrors already.
Timezone can be configured by running tzconfig as root.
Users can be configured with the adduser command and the other
commands referenced in the web page. The root password can be changed
with the passwd command.

Somehow, I suspect that the KDE control center can do a lot of these
things when you use it as root.

--Ken Bloom

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