Re: what do you guys think of this method of installing virtualbox

[Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org>]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 03:16:56PM +0200, l0f4r0@tuta.io wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 31 mars 2020 à 14:14 de roberto@debian.org:
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 01:36:19PM +0200, l0f4r0@tuta.io wrote:
> >
> >> You should specify the version like the following:
> >> apt policy virtualbox-6.1
> >>
> >> Not just:
> >> apt policy virtualbox
> >>
> > 'virtualbox-6.1' is the name of the package in the Oracle repository.
> > 'virtualbox' is the name of the package in the Debian repository.  In
> > order to ascertain whether 'virtualbox' was installed from packages
> > originating from a Debian repository, 'apt-cache policy virtualbox' is
> > the correct command.
> >
> Right, I didn't pay attention to that, thanks ;)
> I suppose "virtualbox" is mentioned because of it's presence inside jessie, stretch-backports and sid repositories (even if I have only buster configured)...
> 
Correct.  Furthermore, if your system was upgraded from jessie (or
stretch while it was testing and still had virtualbox in the
repository), then 'apt-cache policy virtualbox' will show that your
system know about it at some point but that no currently configured
repository provides it.  For example:

roberto@miami:~$  apt-cache policy hello
hello:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2.10-2
  Version table:
     2.10-2 500
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages
roberto@miami:~$  apt-cache policy goodbye
N: Unable to locate package goodbye
roberto@miami:~$  apt-cache policy virtualbox
virtualbox:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: (none)
  Version table:

'hello' is an actual package that my system can obtain from a
repository, 'goodbye' is not a package my system knows about currently
or has ever known about, and 'virtualbox' is not currently available
from any repository but the system knew about it at some point in the
past (either because a repository provided it in its package index or
because I locally installed a package called 'virtualbox' and later
removed it).

Regards,

-Roberto
-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez