This thread on a RackShack support forum is amusing. Users are explaining how to remotely replace the OS that RackShack gives them with Debian GNU/Linux. Thanks to the Trained Monkey for the link.
Posted by jzawodn at August 05, 2002 11:13 PM
What are the odds we could train the monkey to use the [shift] key?
Man, those guys did it the hard way :)
Mucking around with partitions and rebooting from remote is a hair-raising experience even for a veteran Linux guru. A much safer and faster way would be to download the Debian base.tgz and untar it in /, then use apt to start installing packages. Once you have most of your stuff installed, the extra RedHat cruft can be located and eliminated with a simple diff command:
diff -u3 <(cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list | grep ^/usr | sort) <(find /usr | sort)
Just about anything with a "+" can be safely deleted. The directories you'll want to watch out for the most are lib and bin directories, since these can cause problems if you have conflicting library problems.
I like this method because you don't have to resize partitions or reboot to get the new system. I've used this method on RedHat, Caldera, and Slackware servers with very good results.
-Henry
