[lug] apt-get errors

[Paul E Condon]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 08:01:49AM -0700, Gary Hodges wrote:
> On a particular machine I installed woody then upgraded to sarge.  The 
> sources.list file referenced the "testing" version.  I ran "apt-get 
> update" successfully a few times over a few days.  Then I changed 
> "testing" to "sarge" in the sources.list file and immediately started 
> getting errors like this:
> 
> 
> 99% [4 Sources gzip 0] [Waiting for headers]
> gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
> Err http://non-us.debian.org testing/non-US/non-free Sources
>  Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
> 99% [5 Packages gzip 0] [Waiting for headers]
> gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
> Err http://non-us.debian.org testing/non-US/main Packages
>  Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
> 99% [6 Packages gzip 0] [Waiting for headers]
> gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
> Err http://non-us.debian.org testing/non-US/non-free Packages
>  Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
> 
> Failed to fetch 
> http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/dists/testing/non-US/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz  
> Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
> Failed to fetch 
> http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/dists/testing/non-US/non-free/binary-i386/Packages.gz  
> Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
> Failed to fetch 
> http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/dists/testing/non-US/main/source/Sources.gz  
> Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)
> 
> This morning I replaced "sarge" with "testing" in the sources.list file 
> but I still get the same errors.  When I run an update it seems like 
> most of the process works and it is only having problems with a 
> couple/few packages.  For a few days I thought it must be a problem with 
> file(s) in the archive(s), but I'm not seeing any recent reports of this 
> with google.
> 
> Gary
> 

The aliases "stable", "testing" and "unstable" are implemented with links in the
repository file system. It would be very surprising to me, if they were the 
source of the problem.

I use sarge and upgrade reqularly to keep up with the latest progress towards an
official release. I have seen error message similar to what you report, but not
often. When it happens I rerun apt-get update. Invariably it works on the
second try. I don't think I ever saw this when I was using Woody. I have always
it was just one of the features one gets when using pre-release software. Since
it seems to be self-healing, it is not, IMHO, a release critical flaw.

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon at peakpeak.com