doc/apt.conf.5.yo

   1 mailto(apt@packages.debian.org)
   2 manpage(apt.conf)(5)(5 Dec 1998)(apt)()
   3 manpagename(apt.conf)(configuration file for APT)
   4
   5 manpagedescription()
   6 bf(apt.conf) is the main configuration file for the APT suite of
   7 tools, all tools make use of the configuration file and a common command line
   8 parser to provide a uniform environment. When an APT tool starts up it will
   9 read bf(/etc/apt/apt.conf), then read the configuration specified by the
  10 bf($APT_CONFIG) environment variable and then finally apply the command line
  11 options to override the configuration directives, possibly loading more
  12 config files.
  13
  14 The configuration file is organized in a tree with options organized into
  15 functional groups. Option specification is given with a double colon
  16 notation, for instance em(APT::Get::Assume-Yes) is an option within the
  17 APT tool group, for the Get tool. Options do not inherit from their parent
  18 groups.
  19
  20 Syntacticly the configuration language is modeled after what the ISC tools
  21 such as bind and dhcp use. Each line is of the form
  22 quote(APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";) The trailing semicolon is required and
  23 the quotes are optional. A new em(scope) can be opened with curly braces,
  24 like:
  25 verb(APT {
  26   Get {
  27     Assume-Yes "true";
  28     Fix-Broken "true";
  29   };
  30 };
  31 )
  32 with newlines placed to make
  33 it more readable. Lists can be created by opening a scope an including a
  34 single word enclosed in quotes followed by a semicolon.
  35 In general the sample configuration file in
  36 em(/usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf) is a good guide for how it should look.
  37
  38 All of the APT tools take a -o option which allows an arbitary configuration
  39 directive to be specified on the command line. The syntax is a full option
  40 name (APT::Get::Assume-Yes for instance) followed by an equals sign then the
  41 new value of the option. Lists can be appended too by adding a trailing ::
  42 to the list name.
  43
  44 manpagesection(The APT Group)
  45 This group of options controls general APT behavoir as well as holding the
  46 options for all of the tools.
  47
  48 startdit()
  49 dit(bf(Architecture))
  50 System Architecture; sets the architecture to use when fetching files and
  51 parsing package lists. The internal default is the architecture apt was
  52 compiled for.
  53
  54 dit(bf(Ignore-Hold))
  55 Ignore Held packages; This global options causes the problem resolver to
  56 ignore held packages in its decision making.
  57
  58 dit(bf(Immediate-Configure))
  59 Disable Immedate Configuration; This dangerous option disables some
  60 of APT's ordering code to cause it to make fewer dpkg calls. Doing
  61 so may be necessary on some extremely slow single user systems but
  62 is very dangerous and may cause package install scripts to fail or worse.
  63 Use at your own risk.
  64
  65 dit(bf(Get))
  66 The Get subsection controls the bf(apt-get(8)) tool, please see its
  67 documentation for more information about the options here.
  68
  69 dit(bf(Cache))
  70 The Cache subsection controls the bf(apt-cache(8)) tool, please see its
  71 documentation for more information about the options here.
  72
  73 dit(bf(CDROM))
  74 The CDROM subsection controls the bf(apt-cdrom(8)) tool, please see its
  75 documentation for more information about the options here.
  76
  77 enddit()
  78
  79 manpagesection(The Acquire Group)
  80 The bf(Acquire) group of options controls the download of packages and the
  81 URI handlers.
  82
  83 startdit()
  84 dit(bf(Queue-Mode))
  85 Queuing mode; bf(Queue-Mode) can be one of bf(host) or bf(access) which
  86 determins how APT parallelizes outgoing connections. bf(host) means that
  87 one connection per target host will be opened, bf(access) means that one
  88 connection per URI type will be opened.
  89
  90 dit(bf(Retries))
  91 Number of retries to perform. If this is non-zero apt will retry failed
  92 files the given number of times.
  93
  94 dit(bf(http))
  95 HTTP URIs; http::Proxy is the default http proxy to use. It is in the standard
  96 form of em(http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/). Per host proxies can also
  97 be specified by using the form http::Proxy::<host> with the special keyword
  98 em(DIRECT) meaning to use no proxies. The em($http_proxy) environment variable
  99 will override all settings.
 100
 101 Three settings are provided for cache control with HTTP/1.1 complient proxy
 102 caches. bf(No-Cache) tells the proxy to not used its cached response under
 103 any circumstances, bf(Max-Age) is sent only for index files and tells the
 104 cache to refresh its object if it is older than the given number of seconds.
 105 Debian updates its index files daily so the default is 1 day. bf(No-Store)
 106 specifies that the cache should never store this request, it is only
 107 set for archive files. This may be usefull to prevent polluting a proxy cache
 108 with very large .deb files. Note: Squid 2.0.2 does not support any of
 109 these options.
 110
 111 One setting is provided to control the pipeline depth in cases where the
 112 remote server is not RFC conforming or buggy (such as Squid 2.0.2)
 113 Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth can be a value from 0 to 5 indicating how many
 114 outstanding requests APT should send.
 115
 116 dit(bf(ftp))
 117 FTP URis; ftp::Proxy is the default proxy server to use. It is in the
 118 standard form of em(http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/) and is overriden
 119 by the ftp_proxy environment variable. To use a ftp proxy you will have to
 120 set the ftp::ProxyLogin script in the configuration file. This entry
 121 specifies the commands to send to tell the proxy server what to connect
 122 to. Please see em(/usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf) for an example of how
 123 to do this. The subsitution variables available are $(PROXY_USER),
 124 $(PROXY_PASS), $(SITE_USER), $(SITE_PASS), $(SITE), and $(SITE_PORT).
 125 Each is taken from it's respective URI component.
 126
 127 Several settings are provided to control passive mode. Generally it is safe
 128 to leave passive mode on, it works in nearly every environment. However some
 129 situations require that passive mode be disabled and port mode ftp used
 130 instead. This can be done globally, for connections that go through a proxy
 131 or for a specific host (See the sample config file for examples)
 132
 133 dit(bf(cdrom))
 134 CDROM URIs; the only setting for CDROM URIs is the mount point, cdrom::Mount
 135 which must be the mount point for the CDROM drive as specified in /etc/fstab.
 136 It is possible to provide alternate mount and unmount commands if your
 137 mount point cannot be listed in the fstab (such as an SMB mount). The syntax
 138 is to put "/cdrom/"::Mount "foo"; within the cdrom block. It is important to
 139 have the trailing slash. Unmount commands can be specified using UMount.
 140
 141 enddit()
 142
 143 manpagesection(Directories)
 144 The bf(Dir::State) section has directories that pertain to local state
 145 information. bf(lists) is the directory to place downloaded package lists
 146 in and bf(status) is the name of the dpkg status file. bf(Dir::State)
 147 contains the default directory to prefix on all sub items if they do not
 148 start with em(/) or em(./). bf(xstatus) and bf(userstatus) are for future
 149 use.
 150
 151 bf(Dir::Cache) contains locations pertaining to local cache information, such
 152 as the two package caches bf(srcpkgcache) and bf(pkgcache) as well as the
 153 location to place downloaded archives, bf(Dir::Cache::archives). Like
 154 bf(Dir::State) the default directory is contained in bf(Dir::Cache)
 155
 156 bf(Dir::Etc) contains the location of configuration files, bd(sourcelist)
 157 gives the location of the sourcelist and bf(main) is the default configuration
 158 file (setting has no effect)
 159
 160 Binary programs are pointed to by bf(Dir::Bin). bf(methods) specifies the
 161 location of the method handlers and bf(gzip), bf(dpkg), bf(apt-get),
 162 bf(dpkg-source), bf(dpkg-buildpackage) and
 163 bf(apt-cache) specify the location of the respective programs.
 164
 165 manpagesection(APT in DSelect)
 166 When APT is used as a bf(dselect(8)) method several configuration directives
 167 control the default behavoir. These are in the bf(DSelect) section.
 168
 169 startdit()
 170 dit(bf(Clean))
 171 Cache Clean mode; this value may be one of always, auto, prompt and never.
 172 always will remove all archives after they have been downloaded while auto
 173 will only remove things that are no longer downloadable (replaced with a new
 174 version for instance)
 175
 176 dit(bf(Options))
 177 The contents of this variable is passed to bf(apt-get(8)) as command line
 178 options when it is run for the install phase.
 179
 180 dit(bf(UpdateOptions))
 181 The contents of this variable is passed to bf(apt-get(8)) as command line
 182 options when it is run for the update phase.
 183
 184 dit(bf(PromptAfterUpdate))
 185 If true the [U]pdate operation in dselect will always prompt to continue.
 186 The default is to prompt only on error.
 187 enddit()
 188
 189 manpagesection(How APT calls DPkg)
 190 Several configuration directives control how APT invokes dpkg. These are in
 191 the bf(DPkg) section.
 192
 193 startdit()
 194 dit(bf(Options))
 195 This is a list of options to pass to dpkg. The options must be specified
 196 using the list notation and each list item is passed as a single arugment
 197 to dpkg.
 198
 199 dit(bf(Pre-Invoke), bf(Post-Invoke))
 200 This is a list of shell commands to run before/after invoking dpkg. Like
 201 bf(Options) this must be specified in list notation. The commands
 202 are invoked in order using /bin/sh, should any fail APT will abort.
 203
 204 dit(bf(Run-Directory))
 205 APT chdirs to this directory before invoking dpkg, the default is /.
 206
 207 dit(bf(Build-Options))
 208 These options are passed to dpkg-buildpackage when compiling packages,
 209 the default is to disable signing and produce all binaries.
 210
 211 enddit()
 212
 213 manpagesection(Debug Options)
 214 Most of the options in the bf(debug) section are not interesting to the
 215 normal user, however bf(Debug::pkgProblemResolver) shows interesting
 216 output about the decisions dist-upgrade makes. bf(Debug::NoLocking)
 217 disables file locking so apt can do some operations as non-root and
 218 bf(Debug::pkgDPkgPM) will print out the command line for each dpkg
 219 invokation.
 220
 221 manpagesection(EXAMPLES)
 222 bf(/usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf) contains a sample configuration file
 223 showing the default values for all possible options.
 224
 225 manpagesection(FILES)
 226 /etc/apt/apt.conf
 227
 228 manpageseealso()
 229 apt-cache (8),
 230 apt.conf (5)
 231
 232 manpagebugs()
 233 See http://bugs.debian.org/apt.  If you wish to report a
 234 bug in bf(apt-get), please see bf(/usr/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt)
 235 or the bf(bug(1)) command.
 236
 237 manpageauthor()
 238 apt-get was written by the APT team <apt@packages.debian.org>.