Using apt-get

[Karsten M. Self]

on Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 12:13:03PM -0800, Lincoln Peters (lincoln_peters at hotmail.com) wrote:
> I finally set up a box running Debian Linux 3.0r1.  However, while
> selecting the packages to be installed, I discovered that at least one
> of my CD's contains errors that make some packages unreadable.  I am
> unsure how these errors occurred, and so I cannot easily correct the
> problem.

There are several ways a CD can become corrupted.  If you bought the
disks from a vendor, have the media replaced.  If you burned the disk
yourself, check the source ISO, run md5sum on it and check against the
checksum.  If the image file checks out OK, try burning a new copy.  If
it doesn't match the checksum, then you'll have to reload the image.

If you're in the US and have reasonably fast (56k or better) and
unmetered network access, you can simply download packages over the net.
For most purposes, this takes only a few minutes, though larger packages
or package sets might be better done overnight.

This seems to be what you want.

> I've noticed that whenever a new version of a package is available on
> Debian's security site, apt-get installs that instead of the version
> on the CD.  Is there some way to tell apt-get to fall back to an FTP
> server if a package on the CD is unreadable?

Yes.

You can use 'apt-setup' to add network sources to your
/etc/apt/sources.list file.  You'll probably want something like:


    deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
    deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
    deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

...in addition to your cdrom sources.

Run:

   # apt-get update

...to fetch package lists.

Then install a given package with:

   # apt-get install package

Or if you want to do a general update 'apt-get dist-upgrade', if you
want to use a front-end package picker, try 'aptitude'.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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