Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-toto/Packages' in Release file
 

Hello,

i have this error with "apt-get update". I am on jessie/sid. Here is my source.list

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main

I searched for 'binary-toto' specifically, found nothing. This package seems me very strange

Please help

Thanks

Look in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

hum... it's empty...???

Your sources.list is confusing APT. You are calling for 2 completely different repos. Testing and Sid (unstable).

Sources.list for;
testing
Sid
If you installed testing and then added the Sid repo to it and have run a package upgrade you have upgraded your packages to Sid. As the testing repos are still listed, however, it is looking for the package list for testing. It is not finding it because the one available is for Sid.

Test this by commenting out either the first 4 lines in your sources.list. I suspect you will have no trouble with the first 4 commented out.

If not then you really don't have a problem at all. Just leave them commented out. Run Sid. On my hardware it runs a tad better than testing anyway. Has for most of this dev cycle.

I am running update/upgrades on my installs right now. To illustrate the confusion your poor system is experiencing, at least I think this is th problem, I have these packages to upgrade in my most basic testing install;
A very similar install of sid has these;
These have, on my system, the update/upgrade cycles run about simultaniously as it is done in chroot from my main use OS another Sid install. So they were done at the same time yesterday evening. These are what has been added since that time.

So if you installed testing and then added the unstable repos without removing or commenting out the testing repos you are running testing as far as APT knows but your package list is reading all Sid packages.

Your error is for "in Release". Testing and Sid are 2 different releases.

Yes I know, if you check /etc/debian_version in either testing or unstable installs it will read the same at this time (8.0) which is correct as far as it goes. Problem is that unstable is still ahead of testing in that all packages go to Sid first and then migrate to the testing repos.

You can have your sources.list set up that way so as to be able to use the newer and less tested packages from sid if you want but you have to pin the repos so that testing packages are prefered. Without doing that the default is to go with the newest packages which would be from sid.

So getting rid of the testing repos and running your package upgrade with just the Sid repos enabled should solve your problem. You are doing that anyway so it will make no difference to the behaviour of your OS. But APT will be much happier.

thank you for the detailed reply. I must be confused - I thought I saw somewhere the possibility to share testing and sid, but apparently it is quite more complex. I will try this evening and come back to you.

Debian discourages mixing testing and unstable repos into Stable releases. They don't have that policy when it comes to testing.

I have the experimental repo enabled in all testing and sid installs. That repo doesn't represent any Debian version so you don't get those packages automatically. Some are there now as they can't be migrated to testing while it is in freeze as the base version number is different than the target version. LibreOffice is an exampl. The 4.4 version is pretty interesting with a lot of little improvements. Have it installed on one of my installs.

The easy way to grab a package from unstable into a testing install is to have the unstable repo commented out. You make sure testing is completely upgraded and then uncomment the unstable repo, run "apt-get update", install the package you want, comment the unstable repo again and run "apt-get update" to get rid of those packages in your package list. This is fine for one package. If you want to be able to get packages fairly regularly from unstable you need to get the priorities pinned so that testing versions are always prefered and then use;
to install your wanted unstable package.

hum, i left only sid, made "apt-get upgrade", but after that "apt-get update" gives the same error "Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-toto/Packages' in Release file"

Well I don't like that at all.

Simple things first; try a different server. I see you, like I am, are pretty much on the border. Kind of a wet trip to the nearest border for you but dry for me.

The address;
ftp.us.debian.org

doesn't refer, somehow, to an actual repo. It refers to one in the US that is close to your location. I doubt seriously that you are connected to the repo in Washington State that I am using that same address.

Look at the debian mirrors list;
https://www.debian.org/mirror/list

You can try the generic Canadian repo. It may be great. Dont ignore the lower list of "secondary" mirrors. See if there is one close to you.

I know that apt-spy pointed me at the Calgary mirror as my best bet for a long time. It was quite a bit more reliable and faster for me. It is not now but I keep it in mind.

apt-spy is a great package and quite handy but you need to run it several times, at different times of day to actually get good data. You may want to try it sometime. Read the man page first and put some limits on it or it will check every mirror world wide. Takes about 15 seconds per mirror. Hitting all of them can add right up to some serious time.

I limit it to North America. Have hit a good one in Mexico. You might want to limit it to Canada and the US.

If changing mirrors doesn't do it we will see about regenerating some files in your install.