On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 10:13:52PM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote: | Craig Dickson wrote: | | > /var/lib/dpkg/available seems to be the right thing. I can grep for all the | > "Filename:" lines, use sed to throw out all but the actual filenames, then | > grep the resulting file for all the .debs I have, one by one. Any .deb that | > isn't in the list isn't currently avaialable, and is therefore presumably out | > of date, and therefore a candidate for the Lost Packages site. | | This almost works. I have one more question. For some packages, the actual | filename is not the same as what's listed in /var/lib/dpkg/avail. For | example, the current anti-aliasing-howto package is listed in avail as: | | anti-aliasing-howto_2.2.8_all.deb | | However, the file in my /var/cache/apt/archives directory is: | | anti-aliasing-howto_4%3a2.2.8_all.deb | | Note the extra 4%3a mysteriously inserted at the beginning of the package | version. I assume the %3a is intended to represent the ':' character in | hexadecimal,
Yes. | but why is it there at all? | | I can work around it easily enough with a trivial sed script, but I'm | puzzled by it and wondered if anyone could explain it. It's the epoch number. It overrides all other numbers. For example, suppose you made a package anduploaded it with version 1.2.9. Now you make a new release and accidentally upload it as 2.2.10. You can correct it by uploading 1.2.10, but that will be "older" than the incorrect package people have already installed. The fix is to bump the epoch number because 2:1.2.10 is newer than 1:2.2.10. HTH, -D
