[vox-tech] Debian Unstable - apt strangeness

[Matt Roper]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 05:14:53PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Matt Roper (matt at mattrope.com):
> 
> > I know that apt-get by itself won't touch /var/lib/dpkg/available
> 
...
> Interesting.  I most certainly didn't ever notice that before.  Learn
> something new every day!  So,  does apt-get update put new
> available-packages data only in /var/lib/apt/lists, then?

I just did some experimenting with strace and here's what it looks like
is happening to me:

    1.) apt-get calls /usr/lib/apt/methods/FOO (where FOO is "http,"
        "ftp," etc.) to download the /var/lib/apt/lists/ files.
    2.) The /var/lib/apt/lists/ files get opened read only
    3.) /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin and /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin
        get opened R/W.  I assume that the package information from
        the list files gets stored in these binary files for quick
        searching.

It also looks like the code that handles 'dselect update' is the script
/usr/lib/dpkg/methods/apt/update; you can see it updating the available
database after running apt-get update.


Matt

-- 

*************************************************
* Matt Roper <matt at mattrope.com>                *
* http://www.mattrope.com                       *
* PGP Key: http://www.mattrope.com/mattrope.asc *
*************************************************