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There is one use case for
PPAs that may be compelling, specifically, for a server
platform that standard repositories aren't able to handle as well, and that is software
versioning. As I mentioned earlier, a major server component such as PHP or MySQL
may be locked to a specific major version with each Ubuntu Server release. What do
you do if you need to use Ubuntu Server, but the application you need to run is not
available in the version your organization requires? In the past, you would literally
need to choose between the distribution and the package, with some organizations
even using a different distribution of Linux just to satisfy the need to have a specific
application at a specific version. You can always compile the application from source
(assuming its source code is available), but that can cause additional headaches in
the sense that you'd be responsible for compiling new security patches yourself
whenever they're made available. PPAs potentially give you access to applications
not normally available in the default repositories, and/or access to newer versions of
packages than what is normally provided. This gives you, the server administrator,
the ability to choose the approach that is best for your goal.
PPAs are generally added to your server with the
apt-add-repository
command.
The syntax generally uses the
apt-add-repository
command, with a colon, followed
by a username, and then the PPA name. The following command is a hypothetical
example:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:username/myawesomesoftware-1.0
To begin the process, you would start your search by visiting Ubuntu's PPA website,
which is available at
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas
. There, you can search
among the PPAs available.
Once you find a PPA you
would like to add to your server, you can add it simply
by finding the name of the PPA and then adding it to your server with the
apt-
add-repository
command. You should take a look at the page for the PPA, though,
in case there are different instructions. For the most part, the
apt-add-repository
command should work fine for you. Each PPA typically has a set
of instructions
attached, so there shouldn't be any guesswork required here.
Before adding a PPA to your server, it's best to first research
whether or not it's being maintained well. For example, if the PPA
hasn't had any updated packages in a very long time, that's cause
for concern—security fixes are fairly common with most packages.
If a package isn't being regularly updated and has therefore gone
"stale," it may be best to avoid it as it may cause more harm than
good.
Chapter 3
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