Re: List of upgradable packages, version numbers and changelog?

[Markus Fischer <markus@fischer.name>]

On 06.09.2011 15:11, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> It seems that aptitude is trying to fetch the changelog for the version
> of apache2 with the highest version number, which is that in
> lenny-backports, but doesn't find it.
> 
> Instead, you can 'target' aptitude at a particular release, like this:
> 
> 	$ aptitude -t lenny changelog apache2
> 
> That will tell aptitude to look for the official lenny version.

At first I thought it works, but the ChangeLog starts with

$ head -n 3 a
Unable to find an archive "lenny" for the package "apache2"
Get:1 ChangeLog of apache2 [103kB]
apache2 (2.2.9-10+lenny9) stable-security; urgency=high

But since it show versions tells me this:

$ apt-show-versions -u |grep apache2/lenny
apache2/lenny upgradeable from 2.2.9-10+lenny10 to 2.2.9-10+lenny11

I don't actually see the ChangeLog from 2.2.9-10+lenny10 to
2.2.9-10+lenny11 but actually the whole ChangeLog from the release up
until apache2 (2.2.9-10+lenny9) .

This means it would need to download the real deb somehow the extract
the proper content. Something AFAIK apt-listchanges is able to do, but
not in a way I seem to be able to use it without actually triggered a
real installation.

Basically I'd like to pre-fetch all this kind of information before
doing something for real; basically even unmonitored on the machines.

I'm also aware of cron-apt and I can configure cron-apt with this action

$ cat /etc/cron-apt/action.d/9-notify
# Use it with MAILON=output to tell you when upgrades is available.
-q -q --no-act upgrade

to inform me. But alas, I can't run this application without any special
rights:

$ /usr/sbin/cron-apt
mkdir: cannot create directory
`/var/lib/cron-apt/_-_etc_-_cron-apt_-_config': Permission denied
dotlockfile: /var/lib/cron-apt/lockfile: permission denied
dotlockfile: /var/lib/cron-apt/lockfile: permission denied

Hmmm ....

thanks,
- Markus