Using apt-get

Karsten M. Self kmself at ix.netcom.com
Sat Jan 4 15:34:03 PST 2003


on Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 01:26:31PM -0800, Lincoln Peters (lincoln_peters at hotmail.com) wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >From: "Karsten M. Self" <kmself at ix.netcom.com>
> >Reply-To: <talk at nblug.org>
> >To: talk at nblug.org
> >Subject: Re: Using apt-get
> >Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 20:44:53 +0000
> >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.
> 
> I burned the CD's myself.  On Wednesday, I brought my laptop to the SSU 
> library and downloaded all seven ISO's.  It took me about threee hours.
> 
> >
> >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.
> 
> The package set I need adds up to about 144MB.  I could probably handle 
> that on a 56k modem.

Ouch.  That's about 9 hours download at 4200 B/s, which is typical for
me on a 56k line.  Doable, but longish.


> >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.
> 
> I checked the sources.list file, and it listed the CD's first, then the 
> FTP/HTTP servers.  Although it seems that it only used the FTP servers if 
> the files were not on the CD's; it would give up if the problem with the CD 
> was something other than that the package was not there.

> 

> >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'.
> 
> I was actually using dselect.  It seems to work fine (as a frontend, at 
> least), but I found myself spending four hours reading through the list of 
> available packages!

'aptitude' is somewhat easier for many folks.  I tend to use apt-cache
search and apt-get install for most packages myself.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   Geek for hire:  http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html



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