[2200] in athena10
[DRAFT] apt: Confusing "malformed Release file" error for nonexistent
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim Abbott)
Sat Apr 11 18:14:43 2009
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:14:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tim Abbott <tabbott@MIT.EDU>
To: debathena@mit.edu
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0904111751060.26521@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Below is a draft bug report for the confusing malformed release file error
bug. Thoughts? I've reproduced on sid.
I can attach a patch to the report, once we settle on wording.
-Tim Abbott
-------------
Package: apt
Severity: normal
Version: 0.7.20.2
If you have an invalid component name in your sources.list file, e.g.:
deb http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/ sid mainy
and then you do an "apt-get update", you get this confusing error message:
W: Failed to fetch http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/dists/sid/Release
Unable to find expected entry mainy/binary-i386/Packages in Meta-index
file (malformed Release file?)
Suggesting that the problem is a malformed Release file is very confusing
here, given that the issue here is a problem with the local configuration,
not the remote repository (and that a typo in sources.list is probably
much more common than a malformed Release file).
Perhaps we should change "(malformed Release file?)" to "(likely caused by
either configuring a nonexistent repository component or a malformed
Release file)"
-Tim Abbott
