Re: oddity in apt-cache
On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 11:34:21 -0700, Freddy Freeloader wrote:
> Florian Kulzer wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 08:08:22 -0700, Freddy Freeloader wrote:
>>
>>> I have three separate machines that have identical entries in
>>> /etc/apt/sources.list. All were updated and upgraded this morning as a
>>> result of troubleshooting this issue. On machine #1 I can apt-cache show
>>> nhfsstone and it returns the expected data on nhfsstone. On machines 2
>>> and 3 it tells me that the nhfsstone package cannot be found. Running
>>> apt-cache search nfs on all machines yeilds similar results. Machine #1
>>> has nhfsstone included in the result set. Machines 2 and 3 do not. All
>>> machines are pointed to: deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian sid main
>>> contrib non-free. This just makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm
>>> pointing all three to the same set of repositories and yet two machines
>>> cannot find a software package the other machine finds. I realize that
>>> all machines may not see exactly the same server every time, but to have
>>> a package being found on one machine and missing on two others seems very
>>> strange.
>>>
>>> Can anyone explain this anomaly this to me?
>>
>> It seems to me that nhfsstone is no longer in Sid.
>>
>> My guess is that machine #1 has it only as a local package. What is the
>> output of "apt-cache policy nhfsstone" on this machine?
>>
>>
> Thanks Florian,
>
> It is reported as installed, which it is. However, since it was installed
> and the present time I have run "apt-get clean" so the package no longer
> exists in the local apt archives.
But it is still listed by apt-cache as "100 /var/lib/dpkg/status" for
the currently installed version, right?
> Does this mean that apt-cache reads the local database + the server
> repositories rather than the just the server repositories? I tend to see
> that as a bug, not a feature, as it leads people, such as me, to believe a
> package which was installed at some time in the past on the local machine
> still exists in the repositories when it has, in fact, been removed.
I think many people would not like it if apt-cache no longer found the
local packages, custom kernels, etc. If a package is still installed
then its information is included in apt's package cache, and "apt-cache"
bases all its results on this cache. It does not query the repositories
at all but it gets this information indirectly whenever you run "apt-get
update" (or aptitude, etc.).
If you want to run queries on what is available in the repositories you
will probably have to use "apt-file" or "rmadison" (from package
"devscripts").
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |
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