Re: the output of ls /var/lib/apt/lists/*.debian.org_* | wc -l is not constant

[Liam O'Toole <liam.p.otoole@gmail.com>]

On 2011-03-05, Regid Ichira <regid23@yahoo.com> wrote:
>   The output of that command varies by a +/-1 in the last couple of days.
> Why it that?  Could it be related to security updates in stable?
>   The listing itself is related to the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.  My 
> sources.list uses:
>
>     deb security stable/updates main contrib non-free
>     deb-src security stable/updates main contrib non-free
>
>     deb unstable main contrib non-free
>     deb-src unstable main contrib non-free
>     deb testing main contrib non-free
>     deb-src testing main contrib non-free
>

This is not a direct answer to your question, but the contents listed
above warrant some remarks.

First, the file is incomplete. I presume you intentionally omitted the
full URL of the debian mirror on each line.

Second, the file is inconsistent. You are running a mixture of
testing/unstable (nothing wrong with that, if you know what you are
doing), but you are pulling security updates from stable. If you want to
run testing, then you need to tell APT to 'pin' unstable to a low
priority. You should also have a line like this in your sources.list:

	deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free

If you want to run unstable, then you can delete the lines for testing
and stable; unstable is a self-sufficient suite which receives security
updates directly.

-- 
Liam O'Toole
Cork, Ireland