Snort Debian newbie all is well but I have rules questions

["david" <david () davidwbrown name>]

Hello snort users, gurus, developers, evangelists, ranters and ravers. I am a Snort newbie. I have for some time been 
aware of various IDSs and Snort no less. I am a long time Linux user and I have until recently relied upon my firewall, 
the # and type of hits I have been taking and whois to admin and maintain intrusion prevention. Now, I realize 
intrusion detection must be included with my iptables install and blacklist. I have installed Snort via apt-get and 
after reading the content at dshield.org I realize I need to be able to include custom rules such as those issued by 
dshield.org. Unfortunately, Debian forces me to use dpkg to add rules. The standard rule set that is allowed via 
snort.debian.conf is a far cry from the standard /etc/snort/snort.conf. All of the rules are prepended with: 
DEBIAN_SORT_<something> with an intimidating comment in the top of the .conf file: # You have to use "dpkg-reconfigure 
snort" to change them. I downloaded the following URL in an effort 
 to learn how to reconfigure but the PDF "how-to" (http://firmanix.com/deb-snort-howto.pdf) seems much more involved 
that what I currently need. What are the advantages of reinstalling snort with the previously stated guidelines in the 
PDF "how-to" versus keeping my current install and learning how to enlarge the debian.snort.conf to the size of the 
standard snort.conf file? Environment particulars follow. All rants and raves welcomed. Thanks in advance and please 
advise, David.

OS: Debian Linux 3.1 (Linux 2.6.8-2-686-smp on an i686)
Snort:  Version 2.3.2 (Build 12) By Martin Roesch & The Snort Team: http://www.snort.org/team.html

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