a few debian questions

[Dj Statik]

Greetings,

>
> 1. I want to build my own kernel. Can I just grab the standard sources
> from kernel.org, or do I need some dep package. If so, which one?

You could grab the standard sources, and I think this is a good idea, or you
can

apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.22

which is the Debian kernel-source which has various patches applied to it,
note if you want to add other patches such as speakup, grsecurity, selinux,
etc they probalby won't apply to the Debian source because it is already
heavally patched, so I'd suggest just grabbing a vanilla source from
ftp.kernel.org.

>
> 2. Somebody had said here that there was a speakup source package for
> debian. If this is correct, and if I need to get a dep package from
> question 1 above, then do I also need to get this speakup source
> package, or can I just patch the kernel tree with the standard speakup
> 1.5 tarball? If I need to get this speakup source package, then again,
> what package name am I looking for?

apt-get install kernel-patch-speakup

This will install the patch under /usr/src/kernel-patches but I'd probalby
grab the CVS version from speakup itself.

>
> 3. I installed using the woody floppies on linux-speakup.org, and the
> internet for the rest. I understand that there are newer distros since
> woody. Is there a way for me to upgrade my current install to the
> newest stable distro? If so, then how?

Nope, woody is the latest stable distrib, Debian doesn't hurry when making
their distribs stable, about once every 3 years or so.  If it is just a play
box then I'd suggest the unstable tree, it's usually pretty good, bugs get
fixed pretty quickly, and for the most part it's pretty stable anway, just
hope that libc6 doesn't get broken too often *grins*.

You can do this by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and replacing all "stable"
with "unstable

then do a

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

>
> 4. Since the woody disks seemed to have no dhcp client, I had to
> install the module for my network card, and to assign it a static
> ip. These changes seemed to have carried over into the actual distro
> install on the hd.
> When I build my own kernel, I plan to build the network card support
> right into the kernel, and to use dhcpcd. I don't have a problem with
> looking around in /etc/init.d, and changing whatever I want
> manually. However, coming from slackware, which doesn't have such a
> strict package management system, I am afraid to do this, since I
> might break something in the package management system somewhere.
> How safe am I messing with things manually, and how do I know if/when
> it's time for the system to take care of things? I'm not asking this
> question in the way I'd like, but I'm hoping someone here who might
> have moved from slackware to debian will understand what I'm trying to
> ask.
>

you should edit /etc/network/interfaces, and take out the entry for your
eth0 card, then install dhcp3-client and set up eth0 using that.

it keeps it's files in /etc/dhcp3 I believe and has a start up script under
/etc/init.d
Hope this helps.

>From Mitchell