Re: failed to fetch Sid InRelease

[Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net>]

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 11:54:31AM -0500, Louis Wust wrote:

Louis, thanks for your helpful reply. In answering one of your questions
I may have solved the problem.

> On 1/27/16, Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> wrote:
> This is strange for a number of reasons:
>   1) How did Pin: and Pin-Priority: wind up on the same line with a \
>      character separating them in the first place? Possibly this was a
>      copy-paste from a website that lost its formatting?
>   2) If the old file suffered from invalid syntax, how did apt fail to
>      notice until recently, when you tried to install pulseaudio and
>      pavucontrol? Presumably you've had systemd pinned at -1 priority
>      for some time now.

I think I resolved this mystery. While I did not edit the original
version by hand and did not paste its content, but after purging systemd
I issued this command to prevent future installation of systemd-like
packages:

  # echo -e '\n\nPackage: *systemd*\nPin: origin ""\nPin-Priority: -1' \
    >> /etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd

this command shouldn't have produced garbage, but who knows (I'm over 80
and no longer take responsibility for my actions). I may have left out
the "n". What is strange is that the problem didn't show up until after
installing pulseaudio and pavucontrol.

> On 1/27/16, Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> wrote:
> > I can access ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists from another machine to
> > update Wheezy. I can access .../unstable/InReleases with a web
> > browser.
> 
> But can you access ftp.us.debian.org from the Sid machine which is
> exhibiting problems? You mentioned that you can access the site from
> "another machine" and "with a web browser," the latter of which might
> also refer to another machine.

It did because I was only checking if the site was up. But your question
led me to do it on my Sid machine, and I discovered something
extraordinary.

I discovered that my wifi interface name had been changed from wlan0
(what is in interfaces) to wlp3s0 (what iwconfig reports). I snooped
online and apparently systemd-udevd can play this trick. Obviously I
lost connection. 

So I hooked up an ethernet cable to restore the connection. I
did a sid update, safe-up grade, update. This downloaded a
lot. Unfortunately, it seems to have reinstalled systemd despite
this statement in /etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd:

  Package: *systemd*
  Pin: origin ""
  Pin-Priority: -1

Should this not have blocked systemd?

In any case, I next purged systemd again and successfully rebooted to a
wifi connection using the wlp3s0 interface name.

So the problem apparently was that something triggered the command
systemd-udevd to change my wifi interface name from wlan0, which had
been working, to wlp3s0. 

A new problem came up, however, which I should not pursue in this
thread. When I run startx as user, the desktop is hung. When started by
root, no problem. There is no reason for me to infer this, but I suspect
systemd-udevd may have damaged the X window system as well.

Haines