Debian Etch was released in April 2007, which means this release is just short of two years in the making.

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What to expect

Almost every piece of software in the repository has been updated to a newer version, and many new packages have been added.

The following are some of the highlights:

• Kernel 2.6.26
• GNOME 2.22
• Emacs 22.
• X.Org 7.3
• OpenOffice.org 2.4
• Iceweasel/Firefox 3
• MySQL 5.051a
• GCC 4.3
• PHP 5.2.6

The Debian Wiki has a list of notable changes in Lenny, and we’re almost certainly going to cover some of the new additions upon this site (such as the useful iotop package which was recently added to the Lenny distribution, and requires the use of a “modern” kernel.)

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny adds support for Marvell’s Orion platform which is used in many storage devices. Supported storage devices include the QNAP Turbo Station series, HP Media Vault mv2120, and Buffalo Kurobox Pro. Additionally, Lenny now supports several Netbooks, in particular the Eee PC by Asus. Lenny also contains the build tools for Emdebian which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit embedded ARM systems.

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny includes the new ARM EABI port, armel. This new port provides a more efficient use of both modern and future ARM processors. As a result, the old ARM port (arm) has now been deprecated.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6, MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl 5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11, and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).

With the integration of X.Org 7.3 the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support for Adobe® Flash® format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced, such as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling. For leisure time several new games have been added, including puzzle games as well as first-person shooters. Also notable is the introduction of goplay, a graphical games browser offering filters, search, screenshots and descriptions for games in Debian.

The availability and updates of OpenJDK, GNU Java compiler, GNU Java bytecode interpreter, Classpath and other free versions of Sun’s Java technology, into Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 allow us to ship Java-based applications in Debian’s main repository.

Further improvements in system security include the installation of available security updates before the first reboot by the Debian Installer, the reduction of setuid root binaries and open ports in the standard installation, and the use of GCC hardening features in the builds of several security-critical packages. Various applications have specific improvements, too. PHP for example is now built with the Suhosin hardening patch.

For non-native English speaking users the package management systems now support translated package descriptions and will automatically show the description of a package in the native language of the user, if available.

Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network. GNOME is the default desktop environment and is contained on the first CD. Other desktop environments — KDE, Xfce, or LXDE — can be installed through two new alternative CD images. Again available with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 are multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting installation of multiple architectures from a single disc; and this release adds Blu-ray Discs, allowing the archive for an entire architecture to be shipped on a single BD.

In addition to the regular installation media, Debian GNU/Linux can now also be directly used without prior installation. The special images used, known as live images, are available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot setups. Initially, these are provided for the amd64 and i386 architectures only.

The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been improved in many ways: among many other improvements, support for installation from more than one CD or DVD has been restored, firmware required by some devices can be loaded by using removable media, and installations via Braille display are supported. The installer boot process has also received much attention: a graphical menu can be used to choose front-ends and desktop environments, and to select expert or rescue mode. The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to 63 languages.

Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see Debian GNU/Linux on CDs for further information. It will soon be available on DVD, CD-ROM and Blu-ray Disc from numerous vendors, too.

Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 from the previous release, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed Etch) are automatically handled by the aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

Dedication

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident. Thiemo was involved in Debian in many ways. He has maintained several packages and was the main supporter of the Debian port to the MIPS architectures. He was also a member of our kernel team, as well as a member of the Debian Installer team. His contributions reached far beyond the Debian project. He also worked on the MIPS port of the Linux kernel, the MIPS emulation of qemu, and far too many smaller projects to be named here.

Thiemo’s work, commitment, broad technical knowledge and ability to share this with others will be missed. Thiemo’s contributions will not be forgotten. The high standards of his work make it hard to pick up.

fstab is a configuration file that contains information of all the partitions and storage devices in your computer. The file is located under /etc, so the full path to this file is /etc/fstab.

/etc/fstab contains information of where your partitions and storage devices should be mounted and how. If you can’t access your Windows partition from Linux, aren’t able to mount your CD or write to your floppy as a normal user, or have problems with your CD-RW, you probably have a misconfigured /etc/fstab file. So, you can usually fix your mounting problems by editing your fstab file.

/etc/fstab is just a plain text file, so you can open and edit it with any text editor you’re familiar with. However, note that you must have the root privileges before editing fstab. So, in order to edit the file, you must either log in as root or use the su command to become root.

Of course everybody has a bit different /etc/fstab file because the partitions, devices and their properties are different on different systems. But the basic structure of fstab is always the same. Here’s an example of the contents of /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda2 / ext2 defaults 1 1

/dev/hdb1 /home ext2 defaults 1 2

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto rw,noauto,user,sync 0 0

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/hda1 swap swap pri=42 0 0

What does all this gibberish mean? As you see, every line (or row) contains the information of one device or partition. The first column contains the device name, the second one its mount point, third its filesystem type, fourth the mount options, fifth (a number) dump options, and sixth (another number) filesystem check options. Let’s take a closer look at this stuff.

The first and second columns should be pretty straightforward. They tell the mount command exactly the same things that you tell mount when you mount stuff manually: what is the device or partition, and what is the mount point. The mount point specified for a device in /etc/fstab is its default mount point. That is the directory where the device will be mounted if you don’t specify any other mount point when mounting the device.

Like you already learned from the Mounting tuXfile, most Linux distros create special directories for mount points. Most distros create them under /mnt, but some (at least SuSE) under /media. As you probably noticed when looking at the example fstab, I use SuSE’s mount points as an example.

What does all this mean? If I type the following command:

$ mount /dev/fd0

… my floppy will be mounted in /media/floppy, because that’s the default mount point specified in /etc/fstab. If there is no entry for /dev/fd0 in my fstab when I issue the command above, mount gets very confused because it doesn’t know where to mount the floppy.

You can freely change the default mount points listed in /etc/fstab if you’re not satisfied with the defaults your distro has given you. Just make sure the mount point is a directory that already exists on your system. If it doesn’t, simply create it.

Some partitions and devices are also automatically mounted when your Linux system boots up. For example, have a look at the example fstab above. There are lines that look like this:

/dev/hda2 / ext2 defaults 1 1

/dev/hdb1 /home ext2 defaults 1 2

As you’ve learned, these lines mean that /dev/hda2 will be mounted to / and /dev/hdb1 to /home. This is done automatically when your Linux system boots up… if it wouldn’t, you’d have a hard time using your cool Linux system because all the programs you use are in / and you wouldn’t be able to run them if / wasn’t mounted! But how does the system know where you want to mount /dev/hda2 and /dev/hdb1? By looking at the /etc/fstab file of course.

The third column in /etc/fstab specifies the filesystem type of the device or partition. Many different filesystems are supported but we’ll take a look at the most common ones only.

ext2 and ext3 Very likely your Linux partitions are Ext3. Ext2 used to be the standard filesystem for Linux, but these days, Ext3 and ReiserFS are usually the default filesystems for almost every new Linux distro. Ext3 is a newer filesystem type that differs from Ext2 in that it’s journaled, meaning that if you turn the computer off without properly shutting down, you shouldn’t lose any data and your system shouldn’t spend ages doing filesystem checks the next time you boot up.

reiserfs Your Linux partitions may very well be formatted as ReiserFS. Like Ext3, ReiserFS is a journaled filesystem, but it’s much more advanced than Ext3. Many Linux distros (including SuSE) have started using ReiserFS as their default filesystem for Linux partitions.

swap The filesystem name is self-explanatory. The filesystem type “swap” is used in your swap partitions.

vfat and ntfs Your Windows partitions are probably either Vfat or NTFS. The 9x series (95, 98, ME) all use Vfat (more widely known as FAT32), and the NT series (NT, 2000, XP) use NTFS. In 2000 and XP you can choose the filesystem type, so 2000 and XP partitions may be formatted as Vfat, too. If you want to be able to write to your Windows partitions from Linux, I suggest formatting them as Vfat, because Linux’s support for writing to NTFS partitions is a bit shabby at this moment.

auto No, this isn’t a filesystem type The option “auto” simply means that the filesystem type is detected automatically. If you take a look at the example fstab above, you’ll see that the floppy and CD-ROM both have “auto” as their filesystem type. Why? Their filesystem type may vary. One floppy might be formatted for Windows and the other for Linux’s Ext2. That’s why it’s wise to let the system automatically detect the filesystem type of media such as floppies and cdroms.

The fourth column in fstab lists all the mount options for the device or partition. This is also the most confusing column in the fstab file, but knowing what some of the most common options mean, saves you from a big headache. Yes, there are many options available, but I’ll take a look at the most widely used ones only. For more information, check out the man page of mount.

auto and noauto With the auto option, the device will be mounted automatically (at bootup, just like I told you a bit earlier, or when you issue the mount -a command). auto is the default option. If you don’t want the device to be mounted automatically, use the noauto option in /etc/fstab. With noauto, the device can be mounted only explicitly.

user and nouser These are very useful options. The user option allows normal users to mount the device, whereas nouser lets only the root to mount the device. nouser is the default, which is a major cause of headache for new Linux users. If you’re not able to mount your cdrom, floppy, Windows partition, or something else as a normal user, add the user option into /etc/fstab.

exec and noexec exec lets you execute binaries that are on that partition, whereas noexec doesn’t let you do that. noexec might be useful for a partition that contains binaries you don’t want to execute on your system, or that can’t even be executed on your system. This might be the case of a Windows partition.

exec is the default option, which is a good thing. Imagine what would happen if you accidentally used the noexec option with your Linux root partition…

ro Mount the filesystem read-only.

rw Mount the filesystem read-write. Again, using this option might cure the headache of many new Linux users who are tearing their hair off because they can’t write to their floppies, Windows partitions, or something else.

sync and async How the input and output to the filesystem should be done. sync means it’s done synchronously. If you look at the example fstab, you’ll notice that this is the option used with the floppy. In plain English, this means that when you, for example, copy a file to the floppy, the changes are physically written to the floppy at the same time you issue the copy command.

However, if you have the async option in /etc/fstab, input and output is done asynchronously. Now when you copy a file to the floppy, the changes may be physically written to it long time after issuing the command. This isn’t bad, and may sometimes be favorable, but can cause some nasty accidents: if you just remove the floppy without unmounting it first, the copied file may not physically exist on the floppy yet!

async is the default. However, it may be wise to use sync with the floppy, especially if you’re used to the way it’s done in Windows and have a tendency to remove floppies before unmounting them first.

defaults Uses the default options that are rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.

Dump and, uh, what options? Well, dump is a backup utility and fsck is a filesystem check utility. I won’t discuss them in great length here (they would both need their own tuXfile), but I’ll mention them, because otherwise you’d spend the rest of the day wondering what on God’s green Earth do these things mean.

The 5th column in /etc/fstab is the dump option. Dump checks it and uses the number to decide if a filesystem should be backed up. If it’s zero, dump will ignore that filesystem. If you take a look at the example fstab, you’ll notice that the 5th column is zero in most cases.

The 6th column is a fsck option. fsck looks at the number in the 6th column to determine in which order the filesystems should be checked. If it’s zero, fsck won’t check the filesystem.

As an example, we’ll take a look at a couple of fstab entries that have been a source of endless frustration for new Linux users: floppy and CD-ROM (although these days floppies aren’t that important anymore).

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto rw,noauto,user,sync 0 0

This line means that the floppy is mounted to /media/floppy by default and that its filesystem type is detected automatically. This is useful because the type of the floppy may wary. Note especially the rw and user options: they must be there if you want to be able to mount and write to the floppy as a normal user. If you have trouble with this, check your fstab file to see if these options are there. Also note the sync option. It can be async just as well, but it’s sync because of reasons discussed a bit earlier.

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0

Note, again, the user option that enables you to mount the CD as a normal user. The CD-ROM has the ro option because it’s no use mounting a CD-ROM read-write because you wouldn’t be able to write to it anyway. Also note the exec option. It’s especially useful if you’d like to be able to execute something from your CD.

Also note that the noauto option is used with the floppy and CD-ROM. This means that they won’t be automatically mounted when your Linux system boots up. This is useful for removable media, because sometimes there won’t be any floppy or CD-ROM when you boot up your system, so there isn’t any reason to try to mount something that doesn’t even exist.

SOURCE:TUXFILES

Probably the simplest way to solve a forgotten root password problem is to boot your system in the single-user mode.

For LILO users:

If you are using LILO, at the LILO boot prompt (graphical LILO users can press Ctrl-x to exit the graphical screen and go to the boot: prompt), and then enter:

Code:

linux single

This will make you the “root” user without asking for a password. Once the system has booted, you can change the root password using the password command:

Code:

passwd

For GRUB users:

boot machine
when the GRUB menu appears, use arrow keys to choose OS to be booted
press letter “e” on the keyboard to enter edit mode
use arrow keys to select the kernel line for kernel to be booted
press “e” to edit line
go to end of line and type “single” (without quotes) as a separate word
press ESC key to exit the edit mode
press “b” to boot into single user mode

Reset Root Password – Not As Easy Method:

If the easy method doesn’t work on your machine, another way to solve the “lost root password” problem is to boot your computer from your Linux Installation CD/DVD, or from a live-CD/DVD such as Knoppix.

Boot with the live-disk then go to a terminal and su to root (no password is required) then issue the following commands (be sure to replace each /sda1 with your own root partition device):

Code:

mount -o dev,rw /mnt/sda1

cd /mnt/sda1/etc

Once you are into your system /etc directory, you can use a text editor (vim, nano, pico, etc.) to edit the /etc/shadow file where the password is stored. Various information about root and user accounts is kept in this plain-text file but we are only concerned with the password portion.

For example, the /etc/shadow entry for the “root” account may look something like this:

Code:

root:$1$aB7mx0Licb$CTbs2RQrfPHkz5Vna0.fnz8H68tB.:10852:0:99999:7:::

Now, using your favorite editor (I’ll use vim) delete the password hash. For this example, the password is in green text and is all those characters between the 1st and 2nd colons.

Code:

vim shadow

After you’ve edited this field, it should look like this:

Code:

root::10852:0:99999:7:::

Now save the file and change back to the root directory and unmount the system root partition (don’t forget to change the /sda1) as follows:

Code:

cd /
umount /mnt/sda1

Now reboot the computer.

Once the computer has booted and you’re at the login prompt, type “root” and when asked for the password just press ENTER (entering no password). After a successful login, you need to set the new password for root using the following command:

Code:

passwd

Note that I’ve tested both the above methods on my machines but please keep in mind that neither of them will work on every machine.

Reset Forgotten or Lost “User” Password:

If a regular user forgets his/her password, the root user can easily reset the user’s password. For this example, the username will be “bob”.

Enter (as root):

Code:

passwd bob

This will prompt for a new password for the user “bob”.

In the Terminal type:

sudo update-alternatives – -config editor

It will give a screen like this:

Terminal view

Select the desired editor and it is done………..