Using debtrack Debian package update tracking on FlashPenguin

The debtrack tool can save the current package installation information
(essentially that is what "dpkg -l" lists) in a dated checkpoint file
and later diff the current installation against the last checkpoint.
Furthermore, there is a script debtrack supplied as a framework, which
leads you through the typical tasks:

 1) It tells you what debdiff currently thinks about the system, i.e. if
    there are any changes to the latest checkpoint and what they are.

 2) It allows you to post a report (that means sending a mail) to some
    recipient. You should add a local alias "debtrack" which distributes
    to all intended targets. Please enter your (short) name and some
    useful statement about the report. There is no default name, the
    default statement is "Regular security update" and the default
    recipient is "debtrack".

 3) It finally asks whether to create a new checkpoint.

The current best practice of debtrack installation is in the root user's
home directory, aka /root.

Typically you would go to a customers box (log in as ibh, su to root and
cd to go home), do

# debtrack/debdiff.sh

to check whether any changes happened since the last visit and deal with
them (might be leftovers from a former maintenance, or maybe even the
customer did some package installation of its own). If things are clean,
you do whatever maintenance tasks are to do and finally (as ibh) run

# debtrack/debtrack

to get a report of all changes.

The local debtrack alias should point to a collection address at IBH
(intented is debtrack@ibh.de) and as much other users as are interested
in the information (at least the customers tech contact should be there).

A new tool supplied with debtrack 0.02 is the debupdatecheck.sh script
which is supposed to run from cron once a day. It will check whether there
are any outstanding updates, generate a mail to the debtrack alias if this
is the case and it can optionally download the packages that make up the
update. This option defaults to on. You must schedule the script for daily
execution yourself using crontab(8), the proposed time to run it is between
02:00 and 04:00. Stagger the actual minute so significant downloads don't
turn up all at once. An example crontab entry would be

42 2 * * * /root/debtrack/debupdatecheck.sh

To change the behavior of the script, edit it.

ABPSoft