[sf-lug] jim unsatisfied flurry

[jim]

   the questions seem to have an order at this point: 
how to get apt-* to work as expected is the first, 
and others will be deferred until some progress is 
made on this. 
   the solution can include changing expectations, 
but that's more difficult in my case than giving 
up or solving the problem. 
   understanding the format of lines in the 
/etc/apt/sources.list file seems important, and lack 
of specifics is frustrating. 

   your link is the most helpful yet: 
"""
As you may already know, there are two formats for a line in the
sources.list file:
  deb $base $distribution $component $component ...
  deb $base $distribution/

Note, that trailing slash is required. Yes, there is a bug in the
manpage.
""" 

   i'm still not entirely satisfied: 
  deb $base $distribution $component $component ...
  111 2222222222222222222 3333333333 4444444444 ... 

in manpage notation this might be describe as 
  (deb | deb-src) URI [COMPONENT]... 
(forgive initial parens above, i can't recall how 
to write a choice of required params) 
where position 1 takes either deb or deb-src 
position 2 takes a URI 
positions 3 and following take a component name 

   my guess is that anyone who reads the immediately 
above and knows what's what will balk: 
* are there additional possibilities for position 1 
* tokens in positions 3 and beyond may specify things 
other than "components" per strict definition of the 
term (possibly "branches" e.g. main...). 


   i hope to understand syntax exactly, but in the 
meantime i will test by commenting out all lines 
in /etc/apt/sources.list and then uncomment one line 
at a time and execute some test command, hopefully 
an apt-get variant. 




On Mon, 2008-11-24 at 12:03 -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting jim (jim at well.com):
> 
> > third, attached is a copy of the 
> > /etc/apt/sources.list 
> > file that came with my installation of 
> > ubuntu 8.04 
> 
> Jim --
> 
> With the flurry of long and convoluted postings on this topic, I've had
> a difficult time keeping track of what exactly the question is -- but
> some of it seems to involve trouble with the syntax of lines in
> /etc/apt/sources.list .
> 
> On that matter, I've found this page to be helpful:
> http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=sources.list
> 
> 
> 
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