Notes on Debian

This is a collection of notes about doing various things with Debian that I either had a hard time finding quickly or that seemed relatively obscure, and standards for doing things with Debian that I developed at various jobs. In some cases, there may now be better guides available. These notes just capture what I did at the time.

Please note that all of these pages assume a basic knowledge of Unix and Linux and don't generally go into a lot of detail about exactly what to type. As a result, they may be a bit frustrating for new users, and if you're completely new to Linux I recommend looking for some HOWTOs instead. (Or even just not doing the sorts of things that I do; most of what I document here is relatively advanced, like building my own kernel instead of just using the Debian one.)

Best practices:

• Debian server best practices for Stanford
• Debian private repositories
• Debian package build tools
• Using Git for Debian packaging
• Packaging scripts for Debian
• sbuild with btrfs

Hardware:

• Running Debian on an HP Firebird 802
• Running Debian on a Shuttle SN85G4

Software packages:

• Packaging the Sun Java JCE Policy
• Building a kernel the Debian way
• Installing qmail on Debian

System configuration:

• Enabling user quotas in Debian 3.0

Presentation slides:

• Using Debian for Enterprise Infrastructure (PDF, TeX) (2010)

For more general documentation about Debian, see the Debian documentation page and be sure to read the files in /usr/share/doc/package to learn more about any package that you have installed. README.Debian in particular will tell you about any Debian-specific customizations or usage instructions.