SOURCES.LIST(5) APT SOURCES.LIST(5)NAMEsources.list - List of configured APT data sources
DESCRIPTION
The source list /etc/apt/sources.list is designed to support any number
of active sources and a variety of source media. The file lists one
source per line, with the most preferred source listed first. The
information available from the configured sources is acquired by
apt-get update (or by an equivalent command from another APT
front-end).
Each line specifying a source starts with type (e.g. deb-src) followed
by options and arguments for this type. Individual entries cannot be
continued onto a following line. Empty lines are ignored, and a #
character anywhere on a line marks the remainder of that line as a
comment.
SOURCES.LIST.D
The /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory provides a way to add
sources.list entries in separate files. The format is the same as for
the regular sources.list file. File names need to end with .list and
may only contain letters (a-z and A-Z), digits (0-9), underscore (_),
hyphen (-) and period (.) characters. Otherwise APT will print a notice
that it has ignored a file, unless that file matches a pattern in the
Dir::Ignore-Files-Silently configuration list - in which case it will
be silently ignored.
THE DEB AND DEB-SRC TYPES
The deb type references a typical two-level Debian archive,
distribution/component. The distribution is generally an archive name
like stable or testing or a codename like wheezy or jessie while
component is one of main, contrib or non-free. The deb-src type
references a Debian distribution's source code in the same form as the
deb type. A deb-src line is required to fetch source indexes.
The format for a sources.list entry using the deb and deb-src types is:
deb [ options ] uri distribution [component1] [component2] [...]
The URI for the deb type must specify the base of the Debian
distribution, from which APT will find the information it needs.
distribution can specify an exact path, in which case the components
must be omitted and distribution must end with a slash (/). This is
useful for the case when only a particular sub-section of the archive
denoted by the URI is of interest. If distribution does not specify an
exact path, at least one component must be present.
distribution may also contain a variable, $(ARCH) which expands to the
Debian architecture (such as amd64 or armel) used on the system. This
permits architecture-independent sources.list files to be used. In
general this is only of interest when specifying an exact path, APT
will automatically generate a URI with the current architecture
otherwise.
Since only one distribution can be specified per line it may be
necessary to have multiple lines for the same URI, if a subset of all
available distributions or components at that location is desired. APT
will sort the URI list after it has generated a complete set
internally, and will collapse multiple references to the same Internet
host, for instance, into a single connection, so that it does not
inefficiently establish an FTP connection, close it, do something else,
and then re-establish a connection to that same host. This feature is
useful for accessing busy FTP sites with limits on the number of
simultaneous anonymous users. APT also parallelizes connections to
different hosts to more effectively deal with sites with low bandwidth.
options is always optional and needs to be surrounded by square
brackets. It can consist of multiple settings in the form
setting=value. Multiple settings are separated by spaces. The following
settings are supported by APT (note however that unsupported settings
will be ignored silently):
· arch=arch1,arch2,... can be used to specify for which
architectures information should be downloaded. If this option is
not set all architectures defined by the APT::Architectures option
will be downloaded.
· arch+=arch1,arch2,... and arch-=arch1,arch2,... which can be used
to add/remove architectures from the set which will be downloaded.
· trusted=yes can be set to indicate that packages from this source
are always authenticated even if the Release file is not signed or
the signature can't be checked. This disables parts of apt-
secure(8) and should therefore only be used in a local and trusted
context. trusted=no is the opposite which handles even correctly
authenticated sources as not authenticated.
It is important to list sources in order of preference, with the most
preferred source listed first. Typically this will result in sorting by
speed from fastest to slowest (CD-ROM followed by hosts on a local
network, followed by distant Internet hosts, for example).
Some examples:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
URI SPECIFICATION
The currently recognized URI types are:
file
The file scheme allows an arbitrary directory in the file system to
be considered an archive. This is useful for NFS mounts and local
mirrors or archives.
cdrom
The cdrom scheme allows APT to use a local CD-ROM drive with media
swapping. Use the apt-cdrom(8) program to create cdrom entries in
the source list.
http
The http scheme specifies an HTTP server for the archive. If an
environment variable http_proxy is set with the format
http://server:port/, the proxy server specified in http_proxy will
be used. Users of authenticated HTTP/1.1 proxies may use a string
of the format http://user:pass@server:port/. Note that this is an
insecure method of authentication.
ftp
The ftp scheme specifies an FTP server for the archive. APT's FTP
behavior is highly configurable; for more information see the
apt.conf(5) manual page. Please note that an FTP proxy can be
specified by using the ftp_proxy environment variable. It is
possible to specify an HTTP proxy (HTTP proxy servers often
understand FTP URLs) using this environment variable and only this
environment variable. Proxies using HTTP specified in the
configuration file will be ignored.
copy
The copy scheme is identical to the file scheme except that
packages are copied into the cache directory instead of used
directly at their location. This is useful for people using
removable media to copy files around with APT.
rsh, ssh
The rsh/ssh method invokes RSH/SSH to connect to a remote host and
access the files as a given user. Prior configuration of rhosts or
RSA keys is recommended. The standard find and dd commands are used
to perform the file transfers from the remote host.
adding more recognizable URI types
APT can be extended with more methods shipped in other optional
packages, which should follow the naming scheme
apt-transport-method. For instance, the APT team also maintains the
package apt-transport-https, which provides access methods for
HTTPS URIs with features similar to the http method. Methods for
using e.g. debtorrent are also available - see apt-transport-
debtorrent(1).
EXAMPLES
Uses the archive stored locally (or NFS mounted) at /home/jason/debian
for stable/main, stable/contrib, and stable/non-free.
deb file:/home/jason/debian stable main contrib non-free
As above, except this uses the unstable (development) distribution.
deb file:/home/jason/debian unstable main contrib non-free
Source line for the above
deb-src file:/home/jason/debian unstable main contrib non-free
The first line gets package information for the architectures in
APT::Architectures while the second always retrieves amd64 and armel.
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main
deb [ arch=amd64,armel ] http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main
Uses HTTP to access the archive at archive.debian.org, and uses only
the hamm/main area.
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive hamm main
Uses FTP to access the archive at ftp.debian.org, under the debian
directory, and uses only the wheezy/contrib area.
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy contrib
Uses FTP to access the archive at ftp.debian.org, under the debian
directory, and uses only the unstable/contrib area. If this line
appears as well as the one in the previous example in sources.list a
single FTP session will be used for both resource lines.
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable contrib
Uses HTTP to access the archive at ftp.tlh.debian.org, under the
universe directory, and uses only files found under
unstable/binary-i386 on i386 machines, unstable/binary-amd64 on amd64,
and so forth for other supported architectures. [Note this example only
illustrates how to use the substitution variable; official debian
archives are not structured like this]
deb http://ftp.tlh.debian.org/universe unstable/binary-$(ARCH)/
SEE ALSOapt-cache(8)apt.conf(5)BUGS
APT bug page[1]. If you wish to report a bug in APT, please see
/usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.
AUTHORS
Jason Gunthorpe
APT team
NOTES
1. APT bug page
http://bugs.debian.org/src:apt
APT 0.9.14.2 09 June 2012 SOURCES.LIST(5)