On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Dale Scheetz wrote: > > > I should have made it clear that my intent was to find any and all > > references, that could not be satisfied in the supplied set of packages. > > As the Packages file is the "weak link" in the distribution method, I > > decided to interrogate the actual packages in the given archive and parse > > their control files. > > Of course this is not at all true, the package files are generated > directly from the .deb files daily they are never wrong, if they were then > our tools would stop working!
While what you say is in principle true, in practice it doesn't always work out that way. My experience has been that many problems experienced by our users, and much of the fault on "broken" CDs have been the result of out-of-sync Packages files. In my most recent personal case, that broken sync was caused by a broken mirror configuration WRT symlinks. The result was a package in the Packages file but not in the archives. This can happen through a chain of mirrors in several ways. (Yes, I know that there are safeguards to help, but they are not always used) For myself, I draw through such a narrow straw that it may take days to complete a pass. I know, under these circumstances that I must repeat the mirror until a pass can occure in shorter timeframes. I also know that there are ways to unsync if you have a bigger straw. It's only a matter of timing. Several of the CDs that have been produced by vendors with "unspectacular" results have been partialy the result of "broken" Packages files. I have always considered this to be a weak link in the installation process. I know that when I build Packages files using dpkg-scanpackages, that it can take a long time, and that such "reconstruction" within and FTP install/upgrade is difficult without retrieving the archive, but when the package installation tools can't recover the Packages file, a broken CD is unrecoverable trash. Being able to run against an arbitrary archive is going to become more and more necessary as the distribution becomes larger. Thanks, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_-