Since release/12, we've provided install-able versions of Vesta for Linux systems using the RedHat package manager (rpm) and the Debian package manager (dpkg):
For Debian systems, you can download the .debs either from SourceForge or by using apt. To get the latest release of Vesta (release/12.pre13/13 at the time of this writing) with apt, use the following sources.list line if you're using Debian etch:
deb http://pub.vestasys.org/debian/ etch contrib
If you're using Debian sarge (which we still support), use this sources.list line:
deb http://pub.vestasys.org/debian/ sarge contrib
The currently available architectures are:
The different .debs are:
For the RedHat package manager, we have ones based on release/12.pre13/13. You can download the .rpms from pub.vestasys.org or from SourceForge. The different RPMs are:
We've currently only packaged RPMs for the following CPU architectures (because we know of popular RPM-based distributions available for these architectures):
These all have packages built against a vouple different gcc versions. You should check the gcc version on the system where you want to run Vesta (e.g. with "gcc --version") and try to pick one that's close. All three architectures have RPMs build against gcc version 3.4 (look for "gcc3.4" in the filename) and 4.1 (look for"gcc4.1" in the filename). For i386 and x86_64 we have also packaged another set of RPMs built against gcc version 3.3 (look for "gcc3.3" in the filename). Finally, for i386 we have packaged another set of RPMs built in a RedHat 7 environment which is sort of a lowest common denominator and may work on some additional systems (look for "rh7" in the filename).
These packages make installing Vesta much simpler than the traditional by-hand method, but the "Getting Started with Vesta" guide is a more complete reference than this page.
Note that every installation needs at least one machine with the vesta-server package installed. Even if you don't expect to provide sources to others over a network, you need a Vesta repository to act as a peer to the public Vesta repository to try out Vesta.
After installing the packages, you should run /usr/sbin/vesta-setup.sh (part of the vesta-server package). This asks you some important questions to complete the configuration of your installation, starts the servers, and optionally replicates the sources for Vesta and some examples from the public Vesta repository.
Experienced users can feel free to edit the Vesta configuration file and the repository export file themselves, but we recommend that first-time installers use this script.
In a system with Vesta installed from either the RedHat or Debian packages, there are some key files and directories you should be aware of:
Note that the filesystem layout in the install-able packages is different from what's suggested in the traditional by-hand installation. This was done to conform to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS).
If you plan to have multiple client machines as part of the same Vesta installation, here's what you should do:
You'll probably find it useful to go through the tutorial. The vesta-intro man page is a useful guide to Vesta concepts and terminology. The command summary is a helpful reference for the most common Vesta user tasks.
Be sure you understand how to use the weeder (or alternatively EraseCache and QuickWeed). If you don't periodically use these tools to purge the results of old builds, they'll just accumulate in /var/lib/vesta.
For more resources to learn about Vesta, see the LearningVesta page at our wiki.
Users of newer RedHat systems may get an error when trying to install about a missing dependency for libstdc++. The solution is to install the compat-libstdc++ RPM.
If you encounter any other problems, send e-mail to the vesta-users mailing list (<vesta dash users at lists dot sourceforge dot net>) for help.