Issues with apt-get's name resolution

[Marius Gedminas]

Hi!

On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 11:47:24AM -0400, Sabniveesu Shashank wrote:
> I was trying to install TinyOS today from the instructions here:
> http://tinyprod.net/debian-dev/
> 
> using this command --
> 
> sudo apt-get install nesc tinyos-tools *msp430-46* avr-tinyos
> 
> Then, apt-get returned 404 errors for these packages:
> http://tinyprod.net/repos/debian/pool/main/m/msp430-46/msp430-46_20120427_all.deb404
> Not Found

This usually means that your local package list cache is outdated and
you should run 'sudo apt-get update' before retrying the apt-get
install.

(It can also mean a broken mirror, but that's less common.)

> When I tried navigating to the links I found that the exact name of the
> packages have changed (probably replaced by newer versions)
> msp430-46_20120715_i386.deb<http://tinyprod.net/repos/debian/pool/main/m/msp430-46/msp430-46_20120715_i386.deb>
> 
> My questions are:
> 
> 1) Who should be informed for getting this corrected?
>       - The TinyOS package maintainers        (OR)
>       - The Ubuntu Repository team

Neither, most likely.  Run apt-get update, try apt-get install again.

> 2) How and where is the package name 'msp430-46' getting resolved to "
> msp430-46/msp430-46_20120427_all.deb<http://tinyprod.net/repos/debian/pool/main/m/msp430-46/msp430-46_20120427_all.deb>"
> ?
>            -- This is a general question I've had all the time regarding
> APT's name resolution

/var/lib/apt/lists/ has a copy of the file listings of all the apt
repositories configured via /etc/apt/sources.list (and
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list).  apt-get update downloads or updates
these.  Then apt-get install uses these lists to find what repos contain
what versions of the package, picks the latest version, and constructs
the download URL.

HTH,
Marius Gedminas
-- 
Hanlon's Razor:
        Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
        by stupidity.
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