[lug] Debian woes

[Daniel Webb]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 02:14:50PM -0700, David Morris wrote:

> Any possibility of network card, DSL/cable/whatever modem,
> or ISP troubles?  Also try the "official" us mirrors I list
> below.

Just in the last couple of months it has happened at home and at work
(different network, different computer).

Barring a better explanation, I'm going to assume that the cause of my
problems is a combination of poor luck and apt not being robust.  Not too long
after I wrote the email the update went through (after 20 minutes of failing).

> You might try the "Official US" mirror, http://http.us.debian.org,
> http://non-us.debian.org, http://security.debian.org.  I've been using these
> since I started with Debian many years ago.  It gets very busy around the
> time of releases, but other than that I've found it to be the most reliable.  

I was using the http://http.us.debian.org mirror for a while, but same thing
happened, about as often as it does with the Tummy mirror.

> You can also install old versions of a package from those mirrors (such as
> you had to do with firefox) with "apt-get install <package>=<version>"

I didn't realize that.  What if you don't know what the previous version was
though?  I suppose you can go browsing through the mirror tree, but the
snapshot archive way seems more elegant, especially since it will work nicely
with aptitude.

> One possible solution is to put "apt-get update" in a cron script that runs
> every night.  

I do that, but it seems like there's always something that's changed since the
update.  :)  Once Etch goes stable I'll be happy again, because the nightly
updates will be enough.