sources.list
SOURCES.LIST(5) SOURCES.LIST(5)
NAME
sources.list - Package resource list for APT
DESCRIPTION
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
The deb type describes a typical two-level Debian archive,
distribution/component. Typically, distribution is gener-
ally 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 informa-
tion 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-inde-
pendent 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 anony-
mous users. bf(APT) also parallizes connections to differ-
ent 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 slow-
est (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/
URI SPECIFICATION
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 loca-
tion. 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 con-
nect 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.
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) dis-
tribution.
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 pre-
vious 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 debian-non-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 debian-non-US directory, and uses only files found
under unstable/binary-i386 on i386 machines, unsta-
ble/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 struc-
tured like this]
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/binary-$(ARCH)/
SEE ALSO
apt-cache(8) apt.conf(5)
BUGS
See the APT bug page . If
you wish to report a bug in APT, please see
/usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the bug(1)
command.
AUTHOR
APT was written by the APT team .
12 March 2001 SOURCES.LIST(5)
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