SOLVED just now: OK, I've simplified the test (duh), thankfully a little simpler now:
Just swapping between the two local URLs: deb file:/public/debian/debian sid main contrib non-free #deb http://localhost/public/debian/debian sid main contrib non-free and this gets same problem on apt-get update. So try curl: $ curl http://localhost/public/debian/debian/dists/sid/main/binary-amd64/Packages.bz2 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd";> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>403 - Forbidden</title> </head> <body> <h1>403 - Forbidden</h1> </body> </html> Ahah! Finally a different error - 403 forbidden instead of 404 not found! $ ll -l /var/www/public/debian/debian/dists/sid/main/binary-amd64 total 16M 6.8M -rw------- 2 me me 6.8M 2014-08-18 12:00 Packages.bz2 4.0K drwxr-xr-x 2 me me 4.0K 2014-08-18 14:44 Packages.diff 8.8M -rw------- 2 me me 8.8M 2014-08-18 06:07 Packages.gz 4.0K -rw-r--r-- 2 me me 83 2013-02-14 19:18 Release AND, the webserver is not me, so of course it cannot read the Packages.bz2 and Packages.gz files, which both return 403. AND apt-get update then falls back to trying to download Packages, which does not exist, producing the 404. So the solution is file access permissions, not lack of existence (nor unzipping a .bz2 file for example). Could the default error (Warning) output for apt-get update show that it is falling through from Packages.bz2 to Packages.gz and finally Packages (Error), in its output? I can imagine that 'back in the day' this would have caused the screen to be too cluttered with unecessary warnings, as the various debian mirrors got up to speed with .gz and then .bz2 files. But do we rely still on this, or was it only ever a transitory thing, which should now be made more verbose once again? I can imagine a future transition, where the default ought go back to quiet, for a bit, etc. Thanks, all solved, Zenaan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/caosgnstzcx5a-np_cvohyyqjx3efnde6yie2czqpdsafwjc...@mail.gmail.com
