I recently installed latest Debian stable, 7.8 at the time of this writing, with a netinst CD, on a VM with 4 IPs with internet connectivity.
Chose Advanced options -> Expert install and deselected everything except standard system utilities.
With smxi installed full apache2 and mysql, then webmin, phpmyadmin and a script called drush, that is all it has.
Strange that Debian installed exim4, but never mind I will hose it with postfix.
The VM is not working very satisfactorily, I am running into some issues that I don't have in my localhost, which runs on testing.
Given that so many people advice against putting a web server on testing, I went with stable.
Now I am wondering if I should migrate it to testing, there are very few packages in the VM and those should not break anything when upgraded, plus I won't have to reinstall or reboot the webserver for a version change, which would be a greater jolt.
What do you suggest?
Back to top

This doesn't impart any information, you'd have to be far more specific.

From the #debian channel factoid !doesn't work


One of the more amusing IRC factoids I've come across.
Back to top

OK, it works.
Here's what happened: in spite that I run stable + backports there, it is still very old: different web root, different apache2.conf, etc.
I am used to working on my localhost, so I had to tweak things differently in VM's apache2.conf to make it work.
I am not asking for support, just your opinion.
I see that upgrading to next stable version will be difficult: very different kernel and server config.
So I was thinking on putting the server on testing to have a rolling distro, but I have been adviced against it because security updates get shipped faster to stable.
It's complicated either way, I could run testing with additional security and monitoring tools, which I am not familiar with, or stay in stable + backports, which also requires firewall setup and other stuff.
Still dunno.
Back to top

Oh, you're talking about the changes to apache2 config, yes, those are real, but you should probably just move to them, they require changing some stuff in the various config files, once it's updated, that's it.

I can't remember the changes, there were a decent number though if I remember right.

Once you get to more current apache you should be fine for a while though, they don't change config things very often.

I remember snagging on some of these two in some of the updates, maybe it was to 2.2, can't remember, but it took a while to debug them.

So I'd update, fix the glitches until the sites run again, then proceed. You'd have to do this update anyway with new stable, so you might as well get it out of the way would be my advice.

There were a few non intuitive things if I remember, but sadly I didn't document them on these forums, or did I somewhere? Might check the last year's postings to see if I did anywhere.

There were some path changes, etc.

Oh, I remember, the config files that are active have to end in .conf for one, I used to use no extension. There were other changes, but that one was easy to fix. There's more .d directories as well now in debian, which are wise to use because that way you don't have to touch the actual primary conf files.
Back to top

Don't worry about the .conf stuff, it is documented in my questions, when I was going bonkers trying to find out what I was doing wrong.
I am going with stable + backports on live server because Debian pushes security updates faster to stable.
That is something I don't understand, why can't security updates be pushed to jessie as well?
The updates to stable will not work right on testing because there are significant differences, but if updates to testing were pushed as often as they are to stable, I would switch to testing immediately on the live VM.
Back to top