[SOLVED] Debian refusing to see new packages

Ihatewindows522 · 08-02-2017, 04:57 PM

Ok, haven't been on here a while...it's a long story.

I ended up installing Debian Jessie a while back as my (temporary) main OS until 2018. Most everything has been smooth sailing except for package management.

We were without internet access for a while, so I had downloaded the 3 DVD set from Debain at work. Jessie is currently installed and is on rails, except for package management.

So to install packages, I had extracted the /pool folder from each DVD, dropped those packages into ~/pool, and set up a local software repo from there. Worked flawlessly.

Now, since I want to connect to the internet, it suddenly doesn't want to cooperate. Internet connection itself is just fine, and Synaptic claims it's connecting to the Debian servers, but it can't download new package information beyond what it already got from the DVDs. Everything that I copied from the DVDs can be updated, but that's the extent of it. For example, I can download and get updates for httrack because that was on the DVD. But webhttrack doesn't even show up, and I can literally browse to the FTP site where it's located at.

I WAS however smart enough to make a backup of my /etc/apt/sources.list before I started tampering with it, but restoring it does less than squat.

I'm pretty sure I buggered it up with the local repo, but I'm not an expert with Debian repos and obviously have no clue what I'm even doing. So I'd really appreciate some help. Thanks in advance.

Shadow_7 · 08-02-2017, 05:52 PM

# dselect update

If you have multiple repo lines it's not so good at merging them. The above handles the --merge in a pretty brain dead way for me. Plus populates the legacy available which has it's uses. Beyond that there are fairly standard sources.list for normies. If you visit the freenode irc for debian you can get it from the dpkg bot. Otherwise:

FILE: /etc/apt/sources.list

Code:

deb http://security.debian.org             stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian     stretch         main contrib non-free
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian     stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian stretch         main contrib non-free
deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian stretch-updates main contrib non-free

On a minimum install tasksel is likely installed by default, but dselect is not.

Habitual · 08-02-2017, 06:40 PM

Code:

sudo apt sources

is a decent shortcut.

tasksel is on mini.

Ihatewindows522 · 08-03-2017, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

# dselect update

If you have multiple repo lines it's not so good at merging them. The above handles the --merge in a pretty brain dead way for me. Plus populates the legacy available which has it's uses. Beyond that there are fairly standard sources.list for normies. If you visit the freenode irc for debian you can get it from the dpkg bot. Otherwise:

FILE: /etc/apt/sources.list

Code:

deb http://security.debian.org             stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian     stretch         main contrib non-free
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian     stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian stretch         main contrib non-free
deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian stretch-updates main contrib non-free

On a minimum install tasksel is likely installed by default, but dselect is not.

@Shadow_7, as I said, I'm far from an expert on this, but what you're saying seems to be that I rebuild the sources.list from scratch?

Found a clean sources.list and the Wine repo, so I'm adding that as well...gonna try that but not holding my breath.

From what I can see it has to do with the Packages.gz or lack thereof on the Debian servers.

EDIT: Ok...never mind. The clean sources.list worked. Dunno why my backup didn't work but hey it works now. Thank you both!

Habitual · 08-03-2017, 05:32 PM

Sorcery in the Sources.
Glad it worked out.