On 11 Dec 2023 04:31 +0100, from rewe...@gmx.com (Stella Ashburne): > Someone on a social media platform stated that there are only two > "canonical" [sic] ways to verify the version of Debian installed on > a system. They are: > > uname -a > > /proc/version > > Do you agree with the above statement?
No. Running `uname -a` or looking at the contents of `/proc/version` will only tell you about the _currently running_ _kernel_. There is no guarantee that a given kernel version maps exactly to any given Debian release or point-in-time state. If you want to specify the installation state of a Debian system, you should specify the point release you're on (from /etc/debian_version on any modern Debian) and the full _package_ version of any relevant packages (as reported by e.g. dpkg -l). Note that the package version may be different from the version reported by a program itself. A lot of the time, something like "current up-to-date Bookworm" or "Bookworm per <UTC timestamp>" is sufficiently precise, as long as you have confirmed that this is actually the case. >>> sudo dpkg -i linux-image-6.1.0-13-amd64 >>> [...] >>> Is the above the correct way to install kernels that are not in the >>> official repos? >> >> Not quite, because dpkg -i wants a file path, not a package name >> (that's for apt/apt-get). > > 2. sudo dpkg -i openvpn_2.6.8-bookworm0_amd64.deb linux-image-6.1.0-13-amd64 is a package name. (You can check this with apt-cache show.) openvpn_2.6.8-bookworm0_amd64.deb is presumably a file name. "File path" does not necessarily require specifying a directory component of the path; a bare file name is also a (relative) path. -- Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
