Re: 404s on update/install

[Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>]

Craig Dickson <crdic@yahoo.com> writes:

> Noah Meyerhans wrote:
> 
> > This is occurring because you're trying to update your system while the
> > mirror is itself updating its archive.
> > 
> > In the Debian mirroring scheme, Packages files often end up being
> > updated before the actual package files.  So it's not uncommon for a
> > Packages file to refer to foo_1.2.3-1_i386.deb before that package
> > actually exists in the archive.
> 
> I suppose this is because the mirroring software doesn't understand that
> the package list's usefulness is dependent on the packages actually
> being there. Isn't there some way to ensure that the package list is the
> last thing updated for each section of the repository, by suitably
> configuring the software? I can't possibly be the first person to think
> of this, can I?

If the packages are 404, the older Packages.gz list won't be valid
either.

> Sid is generally updated every single day, so, from what you're saying,
> every single day there is a period of time, of whatever duration, when
> apt-get update/upgrade will fail. This is not good. The package
> repository should always be logically consistent from the user's
> perspective.
> 
> I run into this problem probably at least once a week, so either my luck
> has been bad far beyond the limits of probability, or these brief
> inconsistencies aren't nearly as brief as you seem to think.

Jeez, if you're running sid, you really should follow the devel list,
in which case you would have read the discussion about this
yesterday.  One dev said the ftp-master went down during the sync,
another was looking for problems with rsync.

-- 
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>