Lenny will be the next stable release after Debian Etch. It has today still the status unstable, but worked for me without any issues in a virtual machine on my mac. Hence, I decided today to move my servers on Lenny. Upgrade on a 1&1 AMD Rootserver is quite easy.

Juste replace in your /etc/apt/sources.list all ‘etch’ statements with ‘lenny’.

then type the following:

aptitude update
aptitude dist-upgrade
aptitude upgrade
aptitude update
aptitude upgrade

Upgrade worked for my without any major issues within a couple of minutes. However mySQL will not start properly and Apache2 will reset your may-be redirect commands (e.g. AllowOverride All to AllowOverride None in apache2.conf or httpd.conf). Please correct the Apache2 conf files and restart your server with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart.

As for the mySQL Error, the error message is self-explaining:

/etc/init.d/mysql:ERROR: Using expire_logs_days without log_bin crashes

Just go to your /etc/myqsl/my.conf file. The parameter ‘expire_logs_days’ requires now the ‘log_bin’ parameter be turned on. Open the file and turn ‘log_bin’ on (e.g, removing the ‘#’ character infront of it).

Afterwards you only need to restart your mysql server with /etc/initd./mysql restart, and you whole rootserver should now run smoothly on Debian Lenny.

eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator, optimizer, and dynamic content cache. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times.

You can find on Andrew’s side pages the php eaccelerator package for Debian Etch. Following this link brings you to his repository.

add deb http://debian.mcmillan.net.nz/debian etch awm
to your bin section of /etc/apt/sources.list

The following commands are needed to add Andrew’s key to your aptitude:

Debian:~# gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x8f068012;
Debian:~# gpg --export --armor 0x8f068012 | apt-key add -
Debian:~# aptitude update
Debian:~# aptitude install php5-eaccelerator

You have to edit your /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and add the following lines at the end:

[eAccelerator]
extension="eaccelerator.so"
eaccelerator.shm_size="32"
eaccelerator.cache_dir="/tmp"
eaccelerator.enable="1"
eaccelerator.optimizer="1"
eaccelerator.check_mtime="1"
eaccelerator.debug="0"
eaccelerator.filter=""
eaccelerator.shm_max="0"
eaccelerator.shm_ttl="0"
eaccelerator.shm_prune_period="0"
eaccelerator.shm_only="0"
eaccelerator.compress="1"
eaccelerator.compress_level="9"

Finally just restart your Apache2 server for the changes to take effect.

Debian:~# /etc/init.d/apache2/ force-reload

As of February 2008 1&1 has still only Debian Sarge (3.1) in their standard portfolio for initial installation.
But the move to Debian Etch (4.0) is quite easy. Find below the major steps:
First you need to make a complete installation of the old Debian Sarge stable 3.1 system 64-bit via your 1&1 ControlCenter link.
After first login you can check your Kernel-Version with the following command:

:/# uname -mrs
Output: Linux 2.6.20.21-071108a x86_64

Check the installed Debian Version as follows:

:/# cat /etc/debian_version
Output: 3.1

Updating from Sarge (3.1) to Etch (4.0) - I prefer aptitude nowadays to ‘apt-get’, but apt will work as well.

:/# aptitude update:
:/# aptitude dist-upgrade
:/# vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Insert the following:

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main

Then type the following commands into your terminal

:/# aptitude update
:/# aptitude dist-upgrade
:/# shutdown -r now

After successfully reboot you should configure the timezone and continue to install all the stuff you want to have on your brand new Debian Etch 64-bit Server.

:/# tzconfig
:/# aptitude install php5 apache2 mysql-server