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Bug#379067: couple of minor glitches in install of powerpc



Hi Rick,

On Sat, Jul 22, 2006 at 03:55:28AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Hmmm... That doesn't square with my recent experience.  I've had  
> aptitude hang on me a couple of times with messages saying  
> (approximately -- from memory) "can't read cdrom".  If you want, I  
> can explore this behavior in more detail and present a differential  
> diagnosis.  But I've presented my case for not putting the 'deb  
> cdrom' into sources.list for netinst or businesscard installs, and I  
> still think it's a good idea regardless of whether it's a corner case  
> or not.

I think we all talk about completely different things.

You wrote:

> Some testing also noted that /etc/apt/sources.list includes the  
> install CD as a source.  I don't think this is a good idea -- it  
> means that I have to hang onto the install CD and put it in the drive  
> every time I want to apt-get something.  That's just silly.

Inserting the CD into the drive all the time you want to install
something is indeed silly. I completely agree with you!

But it should not happen! You should be requested for the CD only in the
case if a wanted package you otherwise would fetch from net is available
on it. This saves your time and possibly money.

Let me explain it in more detail:

There are at least two ways to add a CD to APT:
 1) By using apt-cdrom which adds a deb cdrom:[...] stanza to
    sources.list
 2) By accessing a mounted CD: "deb file:/mnt/etch-dvd1" 

The first method determines all packages on the CD and writes the
package list to your hard disk. You will never need to reinsert the
CD until you request packages which are available on it.

By using the second method you will need the CD indeed all the time you
start apt-get update, otherwise you get an error. Please also note that
APT has currently a few bugs which make this method sometimes fail (e.g.
#377424).

It's maybe also possible that apt just doesn't find you CD drive because
the device file mapping changed and confuses because of this????

Maybe you should explain your problem in more detail.

Jens



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