newbie needs help with synaptic

[Dave Stevens <geek@uniserve.com>]

Hello all,

I recently installed Morphix GIS on my spare SCSI drive. Smooth installation,
detected devices appropriately, all is good. But I want a few packages that are
not part of this distribution. I have previously used Synaptic in Fedora and
thought it would be a simple way to get the packages. But when I try to search
for a new package I am advised to update my repository list. Well, all the
choices in the repo list are greyed out except for one that doesn't work. I need
to know how to add a working repository. Below are some sample outputs to add
specifics. 

Any and all advice much appreciated.

Dave

here is the message I get when Synaptic starts up:

Couldn't stat source package list http://people.debian.org ./ Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/people.debian.org_%7efpeters_gnome2.4_._Packages) - stat (2
No such file or directory)

When I try to update the package list I get first a list of four index files,
all of which apparently fail. I get a message saying some index files failed to
download (some in this case apparently being all) and then I get the "Couldn't
stat..." message again.

Trying the upgrade system option first gives a query about smart upgrade, which
I answer yes, then I select execute and respond "execute" to the "execute the
following changes?" prompt. This results in:

Failed to fetch file:///opt/deb/i386/old/gimp1.3-data_1.3.22-0kv3_all.deb
  File not found

Failed to fetch
file:///opt/deb/i386/old/libbonobo-activation4_10x1.eaa48bfffeap-8932.4.0-3_i386.deb
  File not found

And this happens time after time when I try to "execute."

Synaptic version 0.47.

ideas????



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