On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 11:48:10AM +0000, Alan Dennis wrote: > Sorry, this is long because I've already spent lots of time failing to > resolve this before coming here... > > I'll start with a quick summary, then follow with the condensed detail... > > === Summary > > tldr; apt-get behaves differently when invoked from the cli(bash) compared > to from cron-apt... [...] > ... Q: how do I debug **why** apt-get is behaving differently? I assume(is > it?) it's something to do with the apt configuration, but how can I see that > config? -o 'Debug::pkgInitialize=true' or -o 'Debug::pkgInitConfig=true' > don't emit anything. (As a test, apt-get -o Debug::Acquire::http=true update > does produce http debug on stdout.) > > A: ? Without looking too deeply into details, one strong candidate for something behaving differently in cron than in your shell would be the environment. Specifically, apt-get names APT_CONFIG as an environment variable pointing it to a config file. I'd try to unravel that first. Perhaps you could sneak an "env > /tmp/foo" in your cron and then compare that to your shell's session environment. Cheers -- t
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