Debian 5.0 Lenny: Good For Servers

I often turn to Debian as a foundation for assembling virtual servers for my testing, since the distribution’s very good text-based installer makes it easy to spin Debian into whatever arbitrary sort of Linux server I seek, and since I find the configuration applets that come bundled with many Debian packages handy for setting up unfamiliar components.

Debian 5.0 can also work well in a desktop role, thanks in part to what appear to be contributions drawn from the Ubuntu Linux releases that are themselves based on a Debian foundation. For instance, during my Lenny testing, I recognised the system’s Update Manager and Software Add/Remove tools from my use of Ubuntu.

Debian 5.0 defaults to GNOME 2.22.2 as its desktop environment, but offers KDE 3.5.10 and Xfce 4.4.2, among other, lesser known options, as desktop alternatives.

Finally, Debian’s broad processor architecture support—which spans 12 architectures and sets the distribution apart from any other Linux flavour of which I’m aware—makes Debian a natural fit for the fast-growing class of embedded Linux implementations.

Debian is freely available for download from the Debian project or from one of its mirrors via www.us.debian.org. As a noncommercial entity, the Debian project doesn’t offer support beyond community resources, although the project maintains a directory of companies offering support services here.

The entire Debian distribution, which includes all the freely redistributable packages in the project’s main repository, spans 31 CDs or five DVDs. I typically download the distribution’s 180MB network install image and pull down the packages I need from a friendly neighborhood mirror site.

I tested the x86 version of Debian 5.0 running on a few virtual machines atop Sun Microsystems’ VirtualBox. I also had it running bare on my Lenovo Thinkpad T60 notebook. Debian 5 supported my Thinkpad T60 hardware without issue, including the sometimes troublesome suspend-to-disk and suspend-to-RAM functions. Also on the power management front, Lenny supported processor frequency scaling out of the box.

On one of my virtual Debian test instances, I set out to test an in-place upgrade scenario involving Debian 4—aka Etch—and a running Mediawiki/Apache/MySQL installation. Support for in-place upgrades of production machines is one of the capabilities that the Debian project has long touted, and, for the most part, my experience upgrading my Etch server to Lenny did run smoothly.

As instructed by the project’s extensive upgrade documentation, I modified my test system’s software source configuration to seek out the new set of packages that comprise Lenny, and proceeded by upgrading first my system’s software tools, and then upgrading the rest of the system. When I rebooted into my new Lenny system, however, my Mediawiki instance was inaccessible until I figured out and executed a needed Apache config file change.