Category: Miscellaneous

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” has been published on last Valentine’s day. Although most of the Dotdeb packages for the previous release, “Etch”, are compatible with Lenny, it is now time for Dotdeb to have dedicated packages for this new distribution.

I’m actually kind of busy at work, but I managed to build and upload the most important packages : PHP5, PHP5 PECL extensions and MySQL 5.1. Additional pieces of software (Google Perftools, for example) will appear in the next few days. Please be patient and don’t hesit to make suggestions.

What (about LAMP) has changed in Lenny?

• Apache 1.3 has been removed, in favour of Apache 2.2. You have to migrate before any other change.
• In addition, libapache-mod-php5 is still present, but it’s a non-sense and a cause of mistake : it depends on the missing apache-common package! You have been warned.
• MySQL 5.0 comes in a satisfying recent release (5.0.51a) and will take profit of official Debian security releases.

What will change in the Lenny branch of Dotdeb?

• PHP5 (5.2, 5.3, …) has now the focus and will be updated frequently, so PHP4 is not maintained anymore. PHP6 will be uploaded when it’s ready.
• Up-to-date MySQL 5.1 packages will be provided as often as needed
• MySQL 5.0 effort has been discontinued in favour the official Debian packages.
• I’m wondering if I will keep maintaining the mail-related packages (Qmail, Vpopmail, Ezmlm, Qmailadmin…). If you really need them, let me know in the comments.

Should I switch to Lenny or should I stick to Etch?

It’s up to you. I will continue maintaining up-to-date packages for Etch in the next few months, so you’ll have time to upgrade your servers. Whatever you choose, you just have to take care of the Dotdeb entries in your sources.list :

• It should refer to stable or lenny if you want to make the switch and take benefits from the brand new Debian distribution :

deb http://your.mirror/ stable all
deb-src http://your.mirror/ stable all

• It should refer to oldstable or etch if you want to stick to the good old Etch and to take your time to upgrade.

deb http://your.mirror/ oldstable all
deb-src http://your.mirror/ oldstable all

(Please chose a mirror near your location on this page)

Conclusion

Thanks for using Dotdeb! This personnal project still aims (and will continue) to provide an efficient and up-to-date LAMP stack to your servers.