Our satellite Internet service has a download cap during "normal" day and evening hours, but downloads are unlimited from midnight to 7 am. So when I was up in the early morning hours, I decided it was time to install all the latest updates to my Debian Lenny desktop.

To do this, I launched the Synaptic package manager, clicked Mark All Upgrades, and then clicked Apply. It was well that I waited until the wee hours, since this modest update of only 23 packages required 88.4 MB of downloads. Most of that was two packages: 20.2 MB for linux-image-2.6.26-1-486 -- I presume that's a kernel upgrade -- and 49.2 MB for Xulrunner, which is part of the Mozilla Gecko engine. (I speculate that this is used by Firefox and Thunderbird.)

While those were installing, I decided to fix "netatalk". This is a Linux implementation of the AppleTalk protocol, which might be useful if I had some older Apples on my network. But I don't, and it annoys me that netatalk takes 30 seconds, every time I boot, to discover that there are no Apples connected.

I know that programs like netatalk, that are launched at bootup, are started by entries in the /etc/rc?.D directories. Fiddling with those directories is a chore. So I was pleased to learn that there is a program, BUM (Boot-Up Manager), which manages these files for Debian-derived distros. After I installed BUM from the repository, I ran it and saw a helpful list of all the start-up applications, with short descriptions. Clearing the check-box by "netatalk," and then clicking "Apply," was all I needed to do.

P.S. Even in the early morning, the download took a few hours. I really began to appreciate how convenient it is to be able to do other work while a system upgrade is being installed!