On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 09:28:34AM -0500, Haines Brown wrote:
My question remains unanswered: on a Sid machine lacking systemd,
after an installation of pulseaudio and pavucontrol,
aptitude or apt-get connects to sever but fails to fetch from
ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/InRelease
The reason is a temporary failure to resolve ftp.us.debian.org
$ uname -a
Linux thinkpad 4.0.0-2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.0.7-1 (2015-07-06) x86_64 \
GNU/Linux
I had added i386 to my amd64 machine to install skype:i386. So now
$ dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
i386.
I ran $ dpkg-query -s on apt and aptitude, and status of both is
install ok installed.
The problem:
$ LANG=C;sudo apt-get update -o APT::Cache-Limit=100000000 && \
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
0% [Connecting to ftp.us.debian.org]
Err:1 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable InRelease
Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.us.debian.org'
Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch \
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/InRelease \
Temporary filure resolving 'ftp.us.debian.org'
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored,
or old ones used instead.
Changing debian packages repository did not help.
Doing the following did not help. Running apt-get update just restored
the lock in the former location.
# rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
# rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
There is a /var/lib/apt/partial directory owned by _apt. I assume this
and the lock are artifacts of apt-get not finishing the
update. Desperate I tried without luck:
# adduser --force-badname --system -home /var/empty --no-create-home \
--quiet _apt
But _apt exists in passwd:
# cat /etc/passwd | grep apt
_apt:x:116:65534::/nonexistent:/bin/false
Commenting dpkg-preconfigure did not help.
I find that the /var/lib/dpkg/available and available-old files are
missing. I find that the /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory has a lock
file and an empty partial subdirectory, but contains no .deb files.
With a viable dpkg and apt and internet connection, there must be some
elemental way around this (wget?), but I'm too ignorant to figure it
out. Perhaps I have to re-install Sid.
Haines Brown
