Debian system administrators who manage more than a handful of systems with a strong desire to maintain a homogeneous environment of installations. The challenge at hand may be constraints in how and when an upgrade to a newer release of Debian Stable is feasible or the install base has become so deviated that an upgrade is no longer reasonable or may be undesirable. Also useful for small installations where the desire to stick with Debian Stable is high and only a few packages in Debian Unstable are desired, less a bumpy upgrade path to the land of Unstable.
This document, Backing Debian Packages using pbuilder, is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Jason Boxman.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1. 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and information at your own risk. There may be errors and inaccuracies, that could be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely, the author(s) do not take any responsibility.
All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.
Please feel free to contact me with corrections, omissions, and questions: <jasonb@edseek.com>
The newest version of this HOWTO will always first be made available here.
Software packages are marked with italics. Filenames, binaries, directories, and the like are marked with a fixed width font. Configuration options are likewise marked with a fixed width font. ^D is simply the CTRL+D key combination to signal end of file in conjunction with cat.
When a running shell is shown, the hash or pound sign (#) denotes a root login and a dollar sign ($) denotes a user login. Commands shown at a prompt are generally intended to be typed by the reader. Always employ foresight before entering any canned commands into a terminal, though, and doubly so if you're asked to run them as root!
# echo "root" $ echo "user" |
While authoring this guide, all the examples were performed within a live pbuilder image running inside another pbuilder image. Multiple levels of indirection are fun.