Is Debian 8.1 still officially supported or not?

[jaytelford]

Hi, I know this is very nooby questions but I am still somewhat used to the way Ubuntu issues updates for its server releases. Ubuntu has LTS releases, which which comes with several years of official support and then standard releases, that come with only 9 months support.

Does Debian do the same thing?

I ask this because I am confused about my release version. I have 8.1 on my server but I have been told that I need to upgrade to the latest release, version 9.

Is this actually true or does Debian still officially support its 8.1 server version in the same way that Ubuntu would?

Can some of you help me clear up my confusion.

Cheers
Jay

[p.H]

Short answer : no.
Debian LTS is not the same as Ubuntu LTS. Please read https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

[Bulkley]

The most important requirement for a server is stability. If your server is doing what it is supposed to my advice is to keep using it. If it connects to the Internet keep your firewall tight.

[GarryRicketson]

---snip--but I have been told that I need to upgrade to the latest release, version 9.

Don't believe everything some people might tell you. It also could depend of who told you this.
If you are using some "provider", that offers servers, and dedicated servers, and they are telling you that you should upgrade, because they support Debian 9, then maybe you should follow their advice, so that you have support. I am no expert by any means, but the few "experts" I do know, none of them recommend or even suggest upgrading a working server to Debian 9, to be honest, they do not even recommend Debian 8.
But that is a whole other topic.
A good rule of thumb, "Don't fix something that is not broken".
This was one, actually the main reason I stopped using a paid hosting company, they used and still do use Ubuntu for all their web servers, these "ubuntu" fanatics are obsessed with upgrades, even when not necessary. After about 2 years, I got tired of the headaches, and down time, every couple of months, they would upgrade the web servers, this all ways resulted in a broken website, down time being anywhere from a couple of days, to a couple of weeks. It is also why I stopped using Ubuntu, every time there were upgrades, if I accepted them, it resulted in a crashed PC.
Fortunately Debian does not do anything the way the Ubuntu crowd does:

Is this actually true or does Debian still officially support its 8.1 server version in the same way that Ubuntu would?

P.H. is 100% correct, No, I add Debian is not Ubuntu, and Debian does not do things the way Ubuntu does.
=============
You don't tell us what kind of server it is, You do know there are many types of servers don't you ?
What OS or distro is best would depend on what kind of server it is.

Can some of you help me clear up my confusion.

Not really, all though there are many members here that can and will give opinions, and those will vary , probably just confuse you more.
The only way I know of is, lot's of research, learn how to support your self, and learn enough about what ever OS you want to use on your "server", learn enough about it to not rely on upgrades that others decide you need.
Learn how to use a VM, and install various distros, if you prefer Linux, test them, ...maybe
open your mind a little and try some other OS's, that are much easier to support yourself, and actually better suited for most server applications, there are a few, Linux/windows are not the best, nor the only ones. The best OS for a server, like I said depends on what kind of server it is, in most cases, (my opinion) the OS/distro that people, (main stream crowd) consider best for PC desktop, and Laptop use, are NOT the best for any type of reliable server applications.
Even with un-supported older versions of Debian, there are many of us still using Debian 6, and 7... these are very reliable distributions, and all though the "official" Debian.org crowd does not support them, there are adminstrator/technical people that can and do support them, how ever the best, do this for a living, and if you do not want to pay, or can not pay, they probably do not have the time, there are a few that will share with you, what they do, so you can learn how to support your self. It all depends on how much real work, and research you are willing to do.
I know, I am getting a little long winded here, and went beyond the scope of your question, Officially, Debian 8 does still have LTS support.
How long, ? Look at the wiki, as suggested, note:

Companies using Debian who are benefitting from this project are encouraged to either help directly or contribute financially. The number of packages which is properly supported depends directly on the level of support that we get.

A commercial offering for Extended Long Term Support is available. Please refer to Extended LTS for further information.

[stevepusser]

If you're still on 8.1, I would say you've missed a lot of security updates for Jessie, though. Do you have the Jessie security repositories in your /etc/apt/sources.list?

example sources.list for Jessie:

Code: Select all

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ jessie/updates main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-updates main

[jaytelford]

Thanks for all your replies guys.

I used to pay for a fully managed dedicated server that sat in a data centre and was looked after by server professionals. I didn't have to really do anything with that server though I had root so I could login as root and my own personal account that was also on the sudoers list. So; had I wanted to, I could have personally changed anything but the hardware configuration.

This server was Ubuntu and I ran the Ubuntu desktop version as well. So over the years I got very used to Ubuntu and although I am not a server professional, I learned to do quite a lot of the basic/medium difficulty admin stuff and learned a lot about Ubuntu. Sadly though, I was not able to keep paying for the privilege of having a server professional looking after my server or for having my server in a data centre. I would have been without a server at that point but fortunately I was able to acquire the physical hardware to set up my own server for the same price of two years of hiring space in a data centre and paying for a server professional to maintain the server.

This meant that I ended up with my own physical server but I had to put the hardware together and install and configure my own OS. At first I was going to just go with Ubuntu as that was were my knowledge of Linux comes from but now that I was my own sysadmin, I thought I should go with the best option for my server and not just something that I was used to or liked.

I did some research and realised that Ubuntu was based on Debian and that the two OSs were somewhat similar, with one exception. Debian seemed to be the more stable and longer lived OS and as stability is important for servers, I decided to go with Debian over Ubuntu.

So for the past year I have been running and maintaining my own server (both hardware and software)

Even with the increased electricity usage and taking into account that I had to change ISPs and go with a more expensive package so that I could get a dedicated IP address for my server - and the fact that I had to purchase the server (which I got a good price on because it came from a friends business who had folded) - I am still better off that I was before with the data centre.

It does mean though that I am having to learn an entirely new OS. Lots of things are the same or similar similar but some things (like support versions) I am finding a little confusing. Which might sound silly to those of you who have been using Debian for a long time but after I was told I should upgrade, I tried to find information on debian.org, and that's where I just got lost.

Though now I know why, i was looking for release versions similar to Ubuntu and it seems Debian doesn't do that.

Anyway, thanks for all your help - you guys have helped clear up some things. I will have a look at the release notes for Debian 9 - which may result in tons more questions so please be patient with me if I start asking a bunch of questions over the next few weeks.

Cheers
Jay

[GarryRicketson]

No problem, yes it is likely you will have more questions,and that is what we are here for.

Thanks for taking the time to explain more, I am inclined to agree now, upgrading would be a good idea, like steve mentioned, especially the security updates.
Something else, the longer you wait to upgrade, the harder it get's to safely do a upgrade, once you are fully upgraded to Debian 9, you will have a fair amount of time, and won't need to worry about it for a few years. If you wait , and then later, it no longer is Debian 9 that is current stable, but Debian 10 (buster),
upgrading from Debian 8 to Debian 10, would be some what more difficult.
I think now, going from Debian 8 to 9 should go smoothly and not be a major problem.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I strongly recommend that you update to Debian 9, LTS does not provide the same level of support as the official Security Team.

[vitaliok78]

Hi, I know this is very nooby questions but I am still somewhat used to the way Ubuntu issues updates for its server releases. Ubuntu has LTS releases, which which comes with several years of official support and then standard releases, that come with only 9 months support.

Does Debian do the same thing?

I ask this because I am confused about my release version. I have 8.1 on my server but I have been told that I need to upgrade to the latest release, version 9.

Is this actually true or does Debian still officially support its 8.1 server version in the same way that Ubuntu would?

Can some of you help me clear up my confusion.

Cheers
Jay

Have you executed bellow commands:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade ?

[kedaha]

Just a few comments which may or may not be of interest:

I was very reluctant to update my dedicated server from 8 to 9, from "jessie" to "stretch" because everything was perfectly configured but, although I'm a great believer in "if it ain't broke, dont fix it," in the end I decided to use current stable as recommended.

My remote dedicated server is hosted with a provider which charges me only thirty-five euros a month which includes two static IPv4 addresses (and IPv6 too, but I can't be bothered with that). If I requested a static IP to run a home server, which I would've preferred, that alone would add another fifteen euros to the phone bill. I don't know how much a computer costs in electricity but probably I would end up paying a similar amount or more. Another almost costless alternative would've been to use a raspberry pi as a server, which I still use for testing purposes; but I don't think it could be used for a production server.

I think it's far better to administer your own server rather than pay a professional but Debian is a hobby for me and I'm basically only interested in running a web and an email server on the same machine.

Everything on my server is installed only from the official, main Debian repository.

I set up my virtual hosts as detailed here, which is, of course, the right way to do it in Debian 9 too.
I use Letsencrypt for ssl and might mention I've additionally improved security as detailed here except I opted for 2048 Diffie-Hellman group parameters.

For me, the most difficult tasks were manually configuring /etc/apache2/sites-available and setting up the email server, which I've written about in another topic. But I refuse to use some third-party GUI for administering my server; for example, for email I use the official Debian postfixadmin package, not the latest version from upstream.