Re: apt-get update: nothing downloaded from a mirror

[Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk>]

On Tue 17 May 2011 at 14:28:07 +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:

> AFAIK apt calls dpkg to do the actual package installation, but other 
> then that they are quite disconnected. I see no reason for apt to touch 
> /var/lib/dpkg/available or /var/lib/dpkg/updates.

It indeed has no reason but dpkg does. The available file may be empty
but it has to exist in case dpkg wants to write to it, which it might
when doing

   dpkg -i <package.deb>

I've always done 'dselect update', instead of 'apt-get update', because
it updates both the apt and dpkg databases.