June 19, 2017 at 18:41Debian 9: what's new
On June 17, 2017, a new, ninth version of Debian, code-named Stretch, was released. Work on Debian 9 lasted for more than two years, and if absolutely for sure - 26 months. It will be supported over the next five years.
The new version is dedicated to the memory of Debian project founder Ian Murdoch , who died at the end of 2015.
The release of a new version of one of the most popular Linux distributions is very important news. And in this article we would like to talk about all the implemented innovations.
In addition, we have another piece of news, no less important: the Debian 9 image is already available to users of our cloud services - Vscale and Virtual Private Cloud , and you can get to know it better right now.
Supported Architectures
Debian 9 supports the following architectures: i386, amd64, armel, armhf, mips, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x. Added support for the new architecture - mips64el.
As with other popular Linux distributions, PowerPC support has been discontinued. Read more about supported architectures here .
Kernel 4.9
Debian 9 uses the kernel of the latest LTS version - 4.9; in the near future, it will be replaced by the core version 4.14, which is scheduled for release this fall.
APT Package Manager Update
The apt package manager in Debian 9 has been significantly improved over previous versions. Unreliable algorithms for calculating checksums are not supported: for example, SHA1 is blocked by default.
In previous versions of Debian, the hash sum mismatch error occasionally occurred when mirror synchronization. In Stretch, it is finally fixed thanks to the use of the so-called by-hash splitting : files with metadata are loaded by the hash of the content.
Another interesting innovation that will undoubtedly be interesting for owners and administrators of mirrors: APT can now use the SRV record in DNS to determine the backend for loading. Backends can now be managed using DNS without using any additional services to process requests. This is how the new deb.debian.org mirror works .
Software Updates
Debian 9 includes the latest versions of many popular development tools and system applications:
- Apache 2.4.25;
- GCC 6.3;
- Systemd 232;
- GnuPG 2.1;
- Golang 1.7;
- OpenJDK 8;
- Perl 5.24;
- PHP 7.0;
- Tomcat 8.5 &
Instead of traditional MySQL, Debian 9 uses its fork of MariaDB by default. When upgrading from a previous version, MySQL 5.5 or 5.6 will be automatically replaced with MariaDB 10.1.
MySQL support will be retained. Read more about this here .
A new approach to naming network interfaces
Instead of the traditional scheme, according to which network interfaces get names like eth0, eth1, eth2, Debian 9 uses a completely different approach - stateless persistent network interface names (stateless names). Naming uses indexed interface numbers in the BIOS, as well as PCI slot numbers.
The eth0 interface, for example, is now called ens0, and wlan0 is wlp3s0. When upgrading from a previous version (Debian 8 Jessie), the names will not be automatically changed.
How to upgrade
To upgrade from Debian 8 Jessie to Stretch, you must first upgrade your system:
$ sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Next, edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list and add the stretch repositories to it. This can be done with one command:
$ sed -i 's/jessie/stretch/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
Then we perform in the second round:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
During the upgrade, the system will ask the following question: Restart services during package upgrades without asking? We select the answer Yes.
When the update is complete, we reboot the system:
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot, do:
$ cat /etc/debian_version
9.0
As you can see, everything went well.
If you are a user of our cloud services, you can make it much simpler and create a virtual server running Debian 9 with one click. And if you are not with us, just join in and you can quickly (as a rule, right on the day of the official release) Get the latest versions of popular Linux distributions.
Conclusion
In this article, we reviewed the innovations implemented in Debian 9 Stretch.
Try and share your impressions.
