Linux – debian: does apt-get support 302 redirects

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Will apt-get follow 302 redirects if instructed?

Clarifications

I have my own DEBIAN repositories and I am in the process of evaluating if I can "virtually consolidate" all of them to one. For this, I need to understand if client side apt-get can follow 302 redirects since the "virtual repo" would use this "trick" to have apt-get fetch .deb package from different places.

Best Answer

Since apt 0.7.21 (14th April 2009) it does, prior to that it didn't.

(The reason was that some mirrors of Debian ran apache with the mod_spelling module, which would redirect non-existent urls to similarly spelled ones -- so asking for dpkg_1.0-2_i386.deb on an out of date mirror might get you a redirect to dpkg_1.0-1_i386.deb)

See Debian bug #79002 for more details if you're interested.

Added: oh, Ubuntu got it earlier: 0.7.20.2ubuntu1 (9th Feb 2009). See Ubuntu bug#18645

Related Solutions

How to Get apt-get to Ignore Some Dependencies – Ubuntu Debian

Simple and easy solution: just specify the unwanted packages with an extra - after each of them.

Example without the - switch:

root@debian:~# apt-get install bsd-mailx 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light liblockfile-bin liblockfile1
[...]

Example using the switch to avoid installing exim4-base. Notice the - at the end:

root@debian:~# apt-get install bsd-mailx exim4-base-
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'exim4-base' is not installed, so not removed
The following extra packages will be installed:
  liblockfile-bin liblockfile1 ssmtp
[...]

As you can see, apt-get does not try anymore to install the exim4-base package, and it does not try to install its various dependencies (exim4-config etc).

And if you were wrong and needed that exim4-base dependency after all, you can just apt-get install it later!

Debian – Why won’t this apt pinning stick

Is it possible that you're being bitten by this bug?

On a mixed sid/testing system, the same text behaves differently whether placed in /etc/apt/preferences or in /etc/apt/preferences.d/pinning.

apt-get respects files placed in either location, and apt-cache policy also shows the expected behavior. aptitude alone behaves this way.

I saw the same behavior on version 0.4.11.11-1+b2, and tried upgrading to 0.6.1.3-3 to see if it was fixed in sid, but the misbehavior remains.

According to the most recent update, this is fixed in aptitude 0.6.3-3.2

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to Get apt-get to Ignore Some Dependencies – Ubuntu Debian

Debian – Why won’t this apt pinning stick

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