Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions [LWN.net]

The Free Standards Group announced "that every major Linux distribution vendor has now applied for and passed Linux Standards Base Certification." We would amend that statement to read "every major RPM-based distribution vendor". Notably missing from the list of LSB-certified distributions are Slackware and Debian.

For now at least, RPM is the standard, and that's unlikely to change any time soon. Chapter 16 (Software Installation) of the LSB 1.3 begins, "Applications should be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in this specification."

It's a reasonable standard given its wide use. Other distributions may have a "better way", but they are not as widely implemented as RPM.

Debian is LSB compliant in most respects. Though packaging is done with dpkg rather than RPM, support for the RPM format is supplied. Debian also includes a "lsb" package that sets up most of what is needed for LSB compliance. What Debian lacks, in particular, is a company that can deal with the paperwork, pay the required fees. Debian is a group of volunteers with no legal existence to sign all the paperwork. These are the issues that will prevent Debian from gaining LSB certification in the near future, even when it has achieved LSB compliance.

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Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 6:15 UTC (Thu) by wolfrider (guest, #3105) [Link]

>> Debian is LSB compliant in most respects. Though packaging is done with dpkg rather than RPM, support for the RPM format is supplied. Debian also includes a "lsb" package that sets up most of what is needed for LSB compliance. What Debian lacks, in particular, is a company that can deal with the paperwork, pay the required fees. Debian is a group of volunteers with no legal existence to sign all the paperwork. These are the issues that will prevent Debian from gaining LSB certification in the near future, even when it has achieved LSB compliance.

--This is a d--d shame. Knoppix brought me to Debian awareness, and if I have a choice I will never go back to RPM-hell. LSB should make an exception in Debian's case (certify them gratis if they are in compliance) because Debian IMHO has the *true* spirit of the Open Source movement.

--Red Hat is highly visible, yes - but from what I've heard, Debian is more suited to the *server* environment because of its STABILITY (even tho I run Knoppix -- Debian testing/unstable -- at home.) I remember a couple of years ago, when RH came out with a .0 rev that couldn't even compile a Linus-stable kernel - because they were providing untested and non-approved (by the developers no less) software!! Because of that fiasco, I will probably never buy RH again. Debian does 99% of what I need right now... The rest will undoubtedly come in time.

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 12:13 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

This is a d--d shame. Knoppix brought me to Debian awareness, and if I have a choice I will never go back to RPM-hell. LSB should make an exception in Debian's case (certify them gratis if they are in compliance) because Debian IMHO has the *true* spirit of the Open Source movement.

I have recently had the same experience, although I just dove straight into Debian (woody on one machine, sarge on another) a few weeks ago. And I'm finding that Debian really is much more to my taste than any Linux distro I've tried before.

I think that the main reason for RPM hell isn't the packaging format itself, but just the tangled web of inderdependencies that has grown up around RedHat over the years. Debian seems to have to some degree avoided that, and managed to keep things more modular so that you can customize your distribution with different versions of things and different choices of software to do certain things while still remaining "Debian". Part of that is their "fake" packages that indicate you've got what's necessary so long as you have one of a list of things.

I don't know the technical details of debs vs. RPMs to know if there is anything particular to the packing format that helps make this easier, but I suspect it really is just a matter of the distribution-- that one could implement a Debian-like set of dependencies with RPMs. I could be wrong, and if so, then RPMs will hopefully grow to include the necessary features in future versions.

(The biggest problem with RPMs was the bug in RedHat 8.0 that led RPM to hang sometimes when you were trying to upgrade pacakges. Indeed, that bug is what drove me to Debian!)

-Rob

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 16:34 UTC (Thu) by hjernemadsen (subscriber, #5676) [Link]

As one who have created packages for both RPM and deb, I must say that I
like the RPM format much better.

What most people fail to realize is that it isn't the packaging system
that makes Debian great, it's the dependency system. The packaging system
on Debian is a pain in the ass to make packages for, and as I have been
able to figure out, it isn't possible to build the packages as anything
other than root (I would love to be proved wrong). A well written source
RPM can be compiled as any user on the system, and all the infomation
about how to build the package etc. is enclosed in _one_ file...

It is possible to use apt-get on RedHat systems. www.freshrpms.net,
provides apt repositories for both RedHat 8 and 7.3, and it also contains
many of the packages that RedHat doesn't include (ie. xine, mplayer,
mp3-plugin for xmms etc.)

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 17:17 UTC (Thu) by joergland (subscriber, #962) [Link]

> it isn't possible to build the packages as anything other than root (I would love to be proved wrong)

Sure you can. You have to use something like fakeroot. It is documented in the packaging manual.

> all the infomation about how to build the package etc. is enclosed in _one_ file

I really do not want to see the .spec of the x-window-system. You call that an advantage?

Joergland

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 24, 2003 16:51 UTC (Fri) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

Sure you can. You have to use something like fakeroot. It is documented in the packaging manual.

Indeed. I always use -rfakeroot. Note that certain programs don't configure themselves correctly when not running as root (they want to test features like the various setuid calls, for example), but that is not a limitation of dpkg.

I really do not want to see the .spec of the x-window-system. You call that an advantage?

Heh. Actually, I believe all you need for a Debian package is debian/rules, debian/control, debian/changelog and debian/copyright. It's just usually a lot easier to split things up into lots of additional files.

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 12:09 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

This is why I'm not real fond of certification. To me, that sort of flies in the face of the community nature and the bazaar nature of free software development.

Compliance is great. It's good for everybody to be compatable, so that stuff can interoperate. And abiding by the LSB standards as much as possible is good too. (Wheteher or not you use debs or rpms isn't so big a deal, I don't think, esp. if you can import the other format.) But then having a paperwork-laden costly "certification", just to get a stamp on your butt when you're already in complaince sounds just a little bit like extortion to me.... One should implement the standards, and that should be good enough.

-Rob

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 12:12 UTC (Thu) by hmh (subscriber, #3838) [Link]

Debian does have legal existence, through the SPI non-profit org.

But LSB compliance is really not that high in the mind of most Debian
developers. Which doesn't mean we don't want it, or that we will work
against it: far from that, actually. Most new work in Debian is done
LSB-compliant from the grounds up.

But unless a Debian-happy individual or organization jumps in to fund
whatever needs to be done to get the paperwork, and does the work (or
help the few people doing it) that needs to be done to smooth out the
remaining corners to get LSB compatibility... forget it :-)

Remember: the LSB is there actually for 3rd-party vendors, i.e. for
non-free software (in just about 99% of the cases, otherwise a native
Debian package could easily be arranged). So, it won't be the highest
priority for Debian unless something really weird happens.

Linux Standards Base Certification for many distributions

Posted Jan 23, 2003 17:56 UTC (Thu) by gleef (guest, #1004) [Link]

In the Debian lsb package is a readme file (/usr/share/doc/lsb/README.Debian.gz) that explains exactly where Debian stands with regards to LSB certification. In a nutshell:

LSB requires a 2.4 kernel, the stable Debian release ships with a 2.2 kernel by default. Though it's easy to install a 2.4 kernel, this one item is enough to keep the current Debian version from being LSB compliant out of the box, and Debian isn't going to change the kernel version until the next major release (i.e. Sarge).
LSB requires that the bin user and group be uid and gid 1, and it is uid and gid 2 in Debian. They expect the LSB to remove this requirement, but it's probably not hard to fix in the next release of Debian if the requirement remains.
LSB requires that, in cron.daily and related directory, scripts with a dot in their filename be run, and Debian currently ignores such files. This will be fixed by the next Debian release.
(There are other entries in the file, but they are more along the lines of "the LSB is vague on this topic, so here's how Debian is interpreting it", so they're probably not compliance blockers).

My impression is that once Sarge (the next version of Debian) gets released as the Stable distribution, SPI will be going through the paperwork to get LSB certification, but it's pointless to do so before then.

Until then, the issue is not lack of someone to do the paperwork, as you indicate in the article, but rather a small number of minor inconsistencies between the current Debian release and the LSB specification. These inconsistencies are known and will be fixed, but since Debian's releases are goverened by technical issues rather than marketing issues, and LSB certification isn't the only thing the developers want to make sure get in Sarge, it will take a little time for the fully LSB compliant release to come out. In the meantime an apt-get install lsb in the current release of Debian results in a system that's essentially LSB compliant with the exception of two bugs that almost nobody ought to get bitten by.

[Disclaimer: I am not a Debian developer, just a user, and have no actual association with SPI. This is merely my understanding of the situation.]