Patching Debian
Debian is a great Linux distro, and I'm not the only person who believes this to be true. I am not willing to discuss whether Debian is better or worse than any other linux distribution as that debate will take months or longer, and there are shortcomings of Debian like any other distribution.
That said, there is an easy way to ensure your copy of Debian is kept current with the latest security patches.
- Login as root (or more appropriately, su to the root account).
- Verify that the /etc/apt/sources.lst file includes the following line:
deb http://security.debian.org/ sarge/updates main contrib non-free
- Issue the command apt-get update to ensure the latest packages have been cached locally.
- Issue the command apt-get upgrade to actually perform the installation process.
Rarely will this require a reboot of the system, but if a kernel is being upgraded, a reboot should be completed.
Additional information is available from the main debian web site or any of the other web sites directly supporting Debian.