Re: missing package long descriptions

[Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net>]

TADA! Repeatability:

On 1/26/14, Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net> wrote:
> On 1/26/14, Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Sun 26 Jan 2014 at 04:52:10 +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>>
>>> I'm currently home and running on local repo.
>>
>> With
>>    deb ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian sid main contrib non-free
>>
>> as the only line in sources.list do you have
>>    ftp.iinet.net.au_debian_debian_dists_sid_main_i18n_Translation-en ?
>>
>> I do - and 'apt-cache show' works as expected.
>
> So do I now. Don't know what happened sorry. Could an ifdown and ifup
> on a new network do that?

OK, /var/lib/apt/lists/ currently contains the Translation-en files
for _both_ my Internet/iiNet sources entry, _and_ my local file:///
repo entry.

Now, when I change the sources.list to point to local file:///
sources, commenting out the iiNet sources, and _not_ doing an apt-get
update, then package long descriptions disappear! Even though the
Translation-en files are still all there.

You see, I forgot my external repo HDD at the place that has Internet
access, but I _had_ updated sources.list after upding that HDD mirror
(I needed a new kernel to test for debugging a non-bootability issue,
and did not want to wait for the mirror to update, which is why I
swapped over to the public Internet repo at all.

I cannot leave the public repo in sources.list enabled, since the
abysmal/slow internet at home just dies with even an apt-get update.

Anyway, the problem is not hard to work around, now that I know why it happens.
Zenaan