Re: apt-cdrom makes unstable entries

[Ken Bloom <kabloom@ucdavis.edu>]

Recall the situation where I thought apt-cdrom had decided my Debian 3.0 
cds were "unstable". It turns out that /etc/apt/sources.list is not to 
be trusted in this situation.

I did some testing with apt-get, trying
apt-get install nano/unstable
apt-get install nano/testing
apt-get install nano/stable
(not actually installing anything, because nano was already installed)
the unstable and stable versions of the command both balked, saying that 
there was no package nano in that branch.
the testing version of the command indicated that the package was 
already installed.

I found that the release of a CD-ROM can be changed in the 
/var/lib/apt/lists/*_Release files, and I edited them to change the 
CD-ROM release to stable. Now apt-get obeys my rules (set 
APT::Default-Release to whatever is most convenient for me over the 
long-run at any time (this means it's stable until I have DSL), and then 
use apt-get -t when I want to get something from a different release)

I *suspect* (but have no real proof) that the "unstable" in 
/etc/apt/sources.list tells apt-get which directory on the CD-ROM it 
should take files from, and release specified in 
/var/lib/apt/lists/*_Release tells apt-get which release the CD is a 
part of for pinning purposes.

Now the Release file for a given CD is copied verbatim from 
/cdrom/dists/unstable/main/binary-i386 , so I guess the question begs to 
be asked why the Debian 3.0 cds are identifying themselves as testing 
rather than stable?