Debian Policy Manual

Abstract

This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution. The policy package itself is maintained by a group of maintainers that have no editorial powers. At the moment, the list of maintainers is:

1. Michael Alan Dorman mdorman@debian.org
2. Richard Braakman dark@xs4all.nl
3. Philip Hands phil@hands.com
4. Manoj Srivastava srivasta@debian.org

Copyright Notice

Copyright ©1996,1997,1998 Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz.

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as /usr/share/common-licences/GPL in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution or on the World Wide Web at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. You can also obtain it by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Contents

• 1 About this manual
  • 1.1 Scope
  • 1.2 New versions of this document
  • 1.3 Feedback
• 2 The Debian Archive
  • 2.1 Package copyright and sections
  • 2.2 Priorities
  • 2.3 Binary packages
  • 2.4 Source packages
• 3 The Operating System
  • 3.1 File system hierarchy
  • 3.2 Users and groups
  • 3.3 System run levels
  • 3.4 Cron jobs
  • 3.5 Console messages
  • 3.6 Menus
  • 3.7 Multimedia handlers
  • 3.8 Keyboard configuration
  • 3.9 Environment variables
• 4 Files
  • 4.1 Binaries
  • 4.2 Libraries
  • 4.3 Shared libraries
  • 4.4 Scripts
  • 4.5 Symbolic links
  • 4.6 Device files
  • 4.7 Configuration files
  • 4.8 Log files
  • 4.9 Permissions and owners
• 5 Customized programs
  • 5.1 Architecture specification strings
  • 5.2 Daemons
  • 5.3 Using pseudo-ttys and modifying wtmp, utmp and lastlog
  • 5.4 Editors and pagers
  • 5.5 Web servers and applications
  • 5.6 Mail transport agents
  • 5.7 News system configuration
  • 5.8 Programs for the X Window System
  • 5.9 Emacs lisp programs
  • 5.10 Games
• 6 Documentation
  • 6.1 Manual pages
  • 6.2 Info documents
  • 6.3 Additional documentation
  • 6.4 Accessing the documentation
  • 6.5 Preferred documentation formats
  • 6.6 Copyright information
  • 6.7 Examples
  • 6.8 Changelog files