apt sources.list syntax

KEITH MASTIN kmastin-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Wed Aug 22 00:15:29 UTC 2007


Hey all;
Just recently installed my first debian distro (4.0), and I can't quite get the sources.list syntax down so that apt-get update doesn't barf.

I've read the mans, checked the bible (v. 3.1) and looked through about as much of the debian mailing list archives as I could before going totally brain-dead, and well, I'm still scratching my head over this and hoping someone out there could shed some light on the situation for me.

Here's my sources.list:
quote
#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r0 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20070407-11:29]/ etch contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r0 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20070407-11:29]/ etch contrib main

deb http://debian.yorku.ca/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/debian/ etch main

deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

deb  http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/
unquote

The last line is the one I'm trying to add by hand., to get some sun-java jre and jdk thingys from http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/

The last few lines of output after running apt-get update:

quote
Ign http://packages.debian.org etch/unstable Packages
Err http://packages.debian.org etch/unstable Packages
  404 Not Found
Fetched 2B in 1s (2B/s)
Failed to fetch http://packages.debian.org/dists/etch/unstable/binary-i386/Packages.gz  404 Not Found
Reading package lists... Done
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://packages.debian.org etch/unstable Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/packages.debian.org_dists_etch_unstable_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
unquote

I see that apt-get update read http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/ as http://packages.debian.org etch/unstable, which is incorrect. It's gotta be a brain fart on my part in decyphering the mans ( the only source of readable info I've found on this).

Here's the relevant section of man sources.list:

 The format for a sources.list entry using the deb and deb-src types
       are:
quote
          deb uri distribution [component1] [component2] [...]

 The URI for the deb type must specify the base of the Debian
       distribution, from which APT will find the information it needs.
       distribution can specify an exact path, in which case the components
       must be omitted and distribution must end with a slash (/). This is
        useful for when only a particular sub-section of the archive denoted by
       the URI is of interest. If distribution does not specify an exact path,
       at least one component must be present.
unquote

Using that info, the line I've added at the end of sources.list looks to be correct, I get essentially the same results when I change the last line to:

quote
deb http://packages.debian.org/debian unstable contrib
unquote

If someone could shed some light on this or lead me in the right direction, I would be eternally grateful.
TIA

Kind regards,
Keith Mastin
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