[2234] in athena10
Re: [DRAFT] apt: Confusing "malformed Release file" error for
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Price)
Mon Apr 13 00:58:08 2009
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:57:37 -0400
From: Greg Price <price@MIT.EDU>
To: Tim Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>
Cc: debathena@mit.edu
Message-ID: <20090413045737.GY21912@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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The message is even more puzzling than that the parenthetical is
wrong, no? It says "Failed to fetch $URI" when in fact it had no
trouble fetching $URI -- rather it failed to find the desired entry
inside it.
A better message could be
W: Couldn't find mainy/binary-i386/Packages in http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/dists/sid/Release
(or "No entry mainy/..." or "Index mainy/... not found in ..." or etc.)
If a two-line message is desired to reduce wrapping, it could be
W: Entry not found in http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/dists/sid/Release
Failed to find Packages file for mainy/binary-i386
Greg
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 06:14:15PM -0400, Tim Abbott wrote:
> 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
