sources.list - Package resource list for APT
The package resource list is used to locate archives of the package
distribution system in use on the system. At this time, this manual
page documents only the packaging system used by the Debian GNU/Linux
system. This control file is located in /etc/apt/sources.list
The source 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 format of each line is: type
uri args. The first item, type, determines the format for args. uri is
a Universal Resource Identifier (URI), which is a superset of the more
specific and well-known Universal Resource Locator, or URL. The rest of
the line can be marked as a comment by using a #.
THE DEB AND DEB-SRC TYPES [Toc] [Back] The deb type describes a typical two-level Debian archive, distribu-
tion/component. Typically, distribution is generally one of stable,
unstable, or frozen, while component is one of main, contrib, non-free,
or non-us. The deb-src type describes 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
are:
deb uri distribution [component1] [componenent2] [...]
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 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 (i386, m68k, powerpc, ...) used on the system.
This permits archiecture-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 reestablish
a connection to that same host. This feature is useful for
accessing busy FTP sites with limits on the number of simultaneous
anonymous users. bf(APT) also parallizes connections to different hosts
to more effectively deal with sites with low bandwidth.
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://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian dists/stable-updates/
The currently recognized URI types are cdrom, file, http, and ftp.
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 CDROM 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 a ftp proxy can be
specified by using the ftp_proxy environment variable. It is
possible to specify a http proxy (http proxy servers often
understand ftp urls) using this method and ONLY this method. ftp
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 a
zip disk to copy files around with APT.
rsh
ssh The rsh/ssh method method invokes rsh/ssh to connect to a remote
host as a given user and access the files. No password authentication
is possible, prior arrangements with RSA keys or rhosts
must have been made. Access to files on the remote uses standard
find and dd commands to perform the file transfers from the
remote.
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
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 stable/contrib area.
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian stable 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 nonus.debian.org, under the debiannon-US
directory.
deb http://nonus.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
Uses HTTP to access the archive at nonus.debian.org, under the debiannon-US
directory, and uses only files found under unstable/binary-i386
on i386 machines, unstable/binary-m68k on m68k, and so forth for other
supported architectures. [Note this example only illustrates how to use
the substitution variable; non-us is no longer structured like this]
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/binary-$(ARCH)/
apt-cache(8) apt.conf(5)
See the APT bug page <URL:http://bugs.debian.org/apt>. If you wish to
report a bug in APT, please see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt
or the bug(1) command.
APT was written by the APT team <apt@packages.debian.org>.
12 March 2001 SOURCES.LIST(5)
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