1 <?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
"utf-8" standalone=
"no"?>
2 <!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC
"-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
5 <!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM
"apt.ent">
8 <!ENTITY % aptverbatiment SYSTEM
"apt-verbatim.ent">
11 <!ENTITY % aptvendor SYSTEM
"apt-vendor.ent">
18 &apt-author.jgunthorpe;
22 <contrib>Initial documentation of Debug::*.
</contrib>
23 <email>dburrows@debian.org
</email>
27 <!-- The last update date -->
28 <date>2012-
06-
09T00:
00:
00Z
</date>
32 <refentrytitle>apt.conf
</refentrytitle>
33 <manvolnum>5</manvolnum>
34 <refmiscinfo class=
"manual">APT
</refmiscinfo>
37 <!-- Man page title -->
39 <refname>apt.conf
</refname>
40 <refpurpose>Configuration file for APT
</refpurpose>
43 <refsect1><title>Description
</title>
44 <para><filename>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</filename> is the main configuration
45 file shared by all the tools in the APT suite of tools, though it is by
46 no means the only place options can be set. The suite also shares a common
47 command line parser to provide a uniform environment.
</para>
50 <para>When an APT tool starts up it will read the configuration files
51 in the following order:
</para>
52 <listitem><para>the file specified by the
<envar>APT_CONFIG
</envar>
53 environment variable (if any)
</para></listitem>
54 <listitem><para>all files in
<literal>Dir::Etc::Parts
</literal> in
55 alphanumeric ascending order which have either no or "
<literal>conf
</literal>"
56 as filename extension and which only contain alphanumeric,
57 hyphen (-), underscore (_) and period (.) characters.
58 Otherwise APT will print a notice that it has ignored a file, unless that
59 file matches a pattern in the <literal>Dir::Ignore-Files-Silently</literal>
60 configuration list - in which case it will be silently ignored.</para></listitem>
61 <listitem><para>the main configuration file specified by
62 <literal>Dir::Etc::main</literal></para></listitem>
63 <listitem><para>the command line options are applied to override the
64 configuration directives or to load even more configuration files.</para></listitem>
67 <refsect1><title>Syntax</title>
68 <para>The configuration file is organized in a tree with options organized into
69 functional groups. Option specification is given with a double colon
70 notation; for instance <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes</literal> is an option within
71 the APT tool group, for the Get tool. Options do not inherit from their
74 <para>Syntactically the configuration language is modeled after what the ISC tools
75 such as bind and dhcp use. Lines starting with
76 <literal>//</literal> are treated as comments (ignored), as well as all text
77 between <literal>/*</literal> and <literal>*/</literal>, just like C/C++ comments.
78 Each line is of the form
79 <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";
</literal>.
80 The quotation marks and trailing semicolon are required.
81 The value must be on one line, and there is no kind of string concatenation.
82 Values must not include backslashes or extra quotation marks.
83 Option names are made up of alphanumeric characters and the characters "/-:._+".
84 A new scope can be opened with curly braces, like this:
</para>
86 <informalexample><programlisting>
93 </programlisting></informalexample>
95 <para>with newlines placed to make it more readable. Lists can be created by
96 opening a scope and including a single string enclosed in quotes followed by a
97 semicolon. Multiple entries can be included, separated by a semicolon.
</para>
99 <informalexample><programlisting>
100 DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt";};
101 </programlisting></informalexample>
103 <para>In general the sample configuration file
&configureindex;
104 is a good guide for how it should look.
</para>
106 <para>Case is not significant in names of configuration items, so in the
107 previous example you could use
<literal>dpkg::pre-install-pkgs
</literal>.
</para>
109 <para>Names for the configuration items are optional if a list is defined as can be seen in
110 the
<literal>DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs
</literal> example above. If you don't specify a name a
111 new entry will simply add a new option to the list. If you specify a name you can override
112 the option in the same way as any other option by reassigning a new value to the option.
</para>
114 <para>Two special commands are defined:
<literal>#include
</literal> (which is
115 deprecated and not supported by alternative implementations) and
116 <literal>#clear
</literal>.
<literal>#include
</literal> will include the
117 given file, unless the filename ends in a slash, in which case the whole
118 directory is included.
119 <literal>#clear
</literal> is used to erase a part of the configuration tree. The
120 specified element and all its descendants are erased.
121 (Note that these lines also need to end with a semicolon.)
</para>
124 The
<literal>#clear
</literal> command is the only way to delete a list or
125 a complete scope. Reopening a scope (or using the syntax described below
126 with an appended
<literal>::
</literal>) will
<emphasis>not
</emphasis>
127 override previously written entries. Options can only be overridden by
128 addressing a new value to them - lists and scopes can't be overridden,
132 <para>All of the APT tools take an -o option which allows an arbitrary configuration
133 directive to be specified on the command line. The syntax is a full option
134 name (
<literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes
</literal> for instance) followed by an equals
135 sign then the new value of the option. To append a new element to a list, add a
136 trailing
<literal>::
</literal> to the name of the list.
137 (As you might suspect, the scope syntax can't be used on the command line.)
</para>
140 Note that appending items to a list using
<literal>::
</literal> only works
141 for one item per line, and that you should not use it in combination with
142 the scope syntax (which adds
<literal>::
</literal> implicitly). Using both
143 syntaxes together will trigger a bug which some users unfortunately depend
144 on: an option with the unusual name "
<literal>::
</literal>" which acts
145 like every other option with a name. This introduces many problems; for
146 one thing, users who write multiple lines in this
147 <emphasis>wrong</emphasis> syntax in the hope of appending to a list will
148 achieve the opposite, as only the last assignment for this option
149 "<literal>::
</literal>" will be used. Future versions of APT will raise
150 errors and stop working if they encounter this misuse, so please correct
151 such statements now while APT doesn't explicitly complain about them.
155 <refsect1><title>The APT Group</title>
156 <para>This group of options controls general APT behavior as well as holding the
157 options for all of the tools.</para>
160 <varlistentry><term><option>Architecture</option></term>
161 <listitem><para>System Architecture; sets the architecture to use when fetching files and
162 parsing package lists. The internal default is the architecture apt was
163 compiled for.</para></listitem>
166 <varlistentry><term><option>Architectures</option></term>
168 All Architectures the system supports. For instance, CPUs implementing
169 the <literal>amd64</literal> (also called <literal>x86-64</literal>)
170 instruction set are also able to execute binaries compiled for the
171 <literal>i386</literal> (<literal>x86</literal>) instruction set. This
172 list is used when fetching files and parsing package lists. The
173 initial default is always the system's native architecture
174 (<literal>APT::Architecture</literal>), and foreign architectures are
175 added to the default list when they are registered via
176 <command>dpkg --add-architecture</command>.
180 <varlistentry><term><option>Build-Profiles</option></term>
182 List of all build profiles enabled for build-dependency resolution,
183 without the "<literal>profile.
</literal>" namespace prefix.
184 By default this list is empty. The <envar>DEB_BUILD_PROFILES</envar>
185 as used by &dpkg-buildpackage; overrides the list notation.
189 <varlistentry><term><option>Default-Release</option></term>
190 <listitem><para>Default release to install packages from if more than one
191 version is available. Contains release name, codename or release version. Examples: 'stable', 'testing',
192 'unstable', '&stable-codename;', '&testing-codename;', '4.0', '5.0*'. See also &apt-preferences;.</para></listitem>
195 <varlistentry><term><option>Ignore-Hold</option></term>
196 <listitem><para>Ignore held packages; this global option causes the problem resolver to
197 ignore held packages in its decision making.</para></listitem>
200 <varlistentry><term><option>Clean-Installed</option></term>
201 <listitem><para>Defaults to on. When turned on the autoclean feature will remove any packages
202 which can no longer be downloaded from the cache. If turned off then
203 packages that are locally installed are also excluded from cleaning - but
204 note that APT provides no direct means to reinstall them.</para></listitem>
207 <varlistentry><term><option>Immediate-Configure</option></term>
209 Defaults to on, which will cause APT to install essential and important
210 packages as soon as possible in an install/upgrade operation, in order
211 to limit the effect of a failing &dpkg; call. If this option is
212 disabled, APT treats an important package in the same way as an extra
213 package: between the unpacking of the package A and its configuration
214 there can be many other unpack or configuration calls for other
215 unrelated packages B, C etc. If these cause the &dpkg; call to fail
216 (e.g. because package B's maintainer scripts generate an error), this
217 results in a system state in which package A is unpacked but
218 unconfigured - so any package depending on A is now no longer
219 guaranteed to work, as its dependency on A is no longer satisfied.
221 The immediate configuration marker is also applied in the potentially
222 problematic case of circular dependencies, since a dependency with the
223 immediate flag is equivalent to a Pre-Dependency. In theory this allows
224 APT to recognise a situation in which it is unable to perform immediate
225 configuration, abort, and suggest to the user that the option should be
226 temporarily deactivated in order to allow the operation to proceed.
227 Note the use of the word "theory" here; in the real world this problem
228 has rarely been encountered, in non-stable distribution versions, and
229 was caused by wrong dependencies of the package in question or by a
230 system in an already broken state; so you should not blindly disable
231 this option, as the scenario mentioned above is not the only problem it
232 can help to prevent in the first place.
234 Before a big operation like
<literal>dist-upgrade
</literal> is run
235 with this option disabled you should try to explicitly
236 <literal>install
</literal> the package APT is unable to configure
237 immediately; but please make sure you also report your problem to your
238 distribution and to the APT team with the buglink below, so they can
239 work on improving or correcting the upgrade process.
243 <varlistentry><term><option>Force-LoopBreak
</option></term>
245 Never enable this option unless you
<emphasis>really
</emphasis> know
246 what you are doing. It permits APT to temporarily remove an essential
247 package to break a Conflicts/Conflicts or Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop
248 between two essential packages.
<emphasis>Such a loop should never exist
249 and is a grave bug
</emphasis>. This option will work if the essential
250 packages are not
<command>tar
</command>,
<command>gzip
</command>,
251 <command>libc
</command>,
<command>dpkg
</command>,
<command>dash
</command>
252 or anything that those packages depend on.
256 <varlistentry><term><option>Cache-Start
</option></term><term><option>Cache-Grow
</option></term><term><option>Cache-Limit
</option></term>
257 <listitem><para>APT uses since version
0.7.26 a resizable memory mapped cache file to store the available
258 information.
<literal>Cache-Start
</literal> acts as a hint of the size the cache will grow to,
259 and is therefore the amount of memory APT will request at startup. The default value is
260 20971520 bytes (~
20 MB). Note that this amount of space needs to be available for APT;
261 otherwise it will likely fail ungracefully, so for memory restricted devices this value should
262 be lowered while on systems with a lot of configured sources it should be increased.
263 <literal>Cache-Grow
</literal> defines in bytes with the default of
1048576 (~
1 MB) how much
264 the cache size will be increased in the event the space defined by
<literal>Cache-Start
</literal>
265 is not enough. This value will be applied again and again until either the cache is big
266 enough to store all information or the size of the cache reaches the
<literal>Cache-Limit
</literal>.
267 The default of
<literal>Cache-Limit
</literal> is
0 which stands for no limit.
268 If
<literal>Cache-Grow
</literal> is set to
0 the automatic growth of the cache is disabled.
272 <varlistentry><term><option>Build-Essential
</option></term>
273 <listitem><para>Defines which packages are considered essential build dependencies.
</para></listitem>
276 <varlistentry><term><option>Get
</option></term>
277 <listitem><para>The Get subsection controls the &apt-get; tool; please see its
278 documentation for more information about the options here.
</para></listitem>
281 <varlistentry><term><option>Cache
</option></term>
282 <listitem><para>The Cache subsection controls the &apt-cache; tool; please see its
283 documentation for more information about the options here.
</para></listitem>
286 <varlistentry><term><option>CDROM
</option></term>
287 <listitem><para>The CDROM subsection controls the &apt-cdrom; tool; please see its
288 documentation for more information about the options here.
</para></listitem>
293 <refsect1><title>The Acquire Group
</title>
294 <para>The
<literal>Acquire
</literal> group of options controls the
295 download of packages as well as the various "acquire methods" responsible
296 for the download itself (see also &sources-list;).
</para>
299 <varlistentry><term><option>Check-Valid-Until
</option></term>
301 Security related option defaulting to true, as giving a Release file's
302 validation an expiration date prevents replay attacks over a long
303 timescale, and can also for example help users to identify mirrors
304 that are no longer updated - but the feature depends on the
305 correctness of the clock on the user system. Archive maintainers are
306 encouraged to create Release files with the
307 <literal>Valid-Until
</literal> header, but if they don't or a
308 stricter value is desired the
<literal>Max-ValidTime
</literal>
309 option below can be used.
313 <varlistentry><term><option>Max-ValidTime
</option></term>
314 <listitem><para>Maximum time (in seconds) after its creation (as indicated
315 by the
<literal>Date
</literal> header) that the
<filename>Release
</filename>
316 file should be considered valid.
317 If the Release file itself includes a
<literal>Valid-Until
</literal> header
318 the earlier date of the two is used as the expiration date.
319 The default value is
<literal>0</literal> which stands for "valid forever".
320 Archive specific settings can be made by appending the label of the archive
325 <varlistentry><term><option>Min-ValidTime
</option></term>
326 <listitem><para>Minimum time (in seconds) after its creation (as indicated
327 by the
<literal>Date
</literal> header) that the
<filename>Release
</filename>
328 file should be considered valid.
329 Use this if you need to use a seldom updated (local) mirror of a more
330 frequently updated archive with a
<literal>Valid-Until
</literal> header
331 instead of completely disabling the expiration date checking.
332 Archive specific settings can and should be used by appending the label of
333 the archive to the option name.
337 <varlistentry><term><option>PDiffs
</option></term>
338 <listitem><para>Try to download deltas called
<literal>PDiffs
</literal> for
339 indexes (like
<filename>Packages
</filename> files) instead of downloading
340 whole ones. True by default.
</para>
341 <para>Two sub-options to limit the use of PDiffs are also available:
342 <literal>FileLimit
</literal> can be used to specify a maximum number of
343 PDiff files should be downloaded to update a file.
<literal>SizeLimit
</literal>
344 on the other hand is the maximum percentage of the size of all patches
345 compared to the size of the targeted file. If one of these limits is
346 exceeded the complete file is downloaded instead of the patches.
350 <varlistentry><term><option>Queue-Mode
</option></term>
351 <listitem><para>Queuing mode;
<literal>Queue-Mode
</literal> can be one of
<literal>host
</literal> or
352 <literal>access
</literal> which determines how APT parallelizes outgoing
353 connections.
<literal>host
</literal> means that one connection per target host
354 will be opened,
<literal>access
</literal> means that one connection per URI type
355 will be opened.
</para></listitem>
358 <varlistentry><term><option>Retries
</option></term>
359 <listitem><para>Number of retries to perform. If this is non-zero APT will retry failed
360 files the given number of times.
</para></listitem>
363 <varlistentry><term><option>Source-Symlinks
</option></term>
364 <listitem><para>Use symlinks for source archives. If set to true then source archives will
365 be symlinked when possible instead of copying. True is the default.
</para></listitem>
368 <varlistentry><term><option>http
</option></term>
369 <listitem><para><literal>http::Proxy
</literal> sets the default proxy to use for HTTP
370 URIs. It is in the standard form of
<literal>http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/
</literal>.
371 Per host proxies can also be specified by using the form
372 <literal>http::Proxy::
<host
></literal> with the special keyword
<literal>DIRECT
</literal>
373 meaning to use no proxies. If no one of the above settings is specified,
374 <envar>http_proxy
</envar> environment variable
377 <para>Three settings are provided for cache control with HTTP/
1.1 compliant
379 <literal>No-Cache
</literal> tells the proxy not to use its cached
380 response under any circumstances.
381 <literal>Max-Age
</literal> sets the allowed maximum age (in seconds) of
382 an index file in the cache of the proxy.
383 <literal>No-Store
</literal> specifies that the proxy should not store
384 the requested archive files in its cache, which can be used to prevent
385 the proxy from polluting its cache with (big) .deb files.
</para>
387 <para>The option
<literal>timeout
</literal> sets the timeout timer used by the method;
388 this value applies to the connection as well as the data timeout.
</para>
390 <para>The setting
<literal>Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth
</literal> can be used to
391 enable HTTP pipelining (RFC
2616 section
8.1.2.2) which can be beneficial e.g. on
392 high-latency connections. It specifies how many requests are sent in a pipeline.
393 APT tries to detect and workaround misbehaving webservers and proxies at runtime, but
394 if you know that yours does not conform to the HTTP/
1.1 specification pipelining can
395 be disabled by setting the value to
0. It is enabled by default with the value
10.
</para>
397 <para><literal>Acquire::http::AllowRedirect
</literal> controls whether APT will follow
398 redirects, which is enabled by default.
</para>
400 <para>The used bandwidth can be limited with
401 <literal>Acquire::http::Dl-Limit
</literal> which accepts integer
402 values in kilobytes per second. The default value is
0 which
403 deactivates the limit and tries to use all available bandwidth.
404 Note that this option implicitly disables downloading from
405 multiple servers at the same time.
</para>
407 <para><literal>Acquire::http::User-Agent
</literal> can be used to set a different
408 User-Agent for the http download method as some proxies allow access for clients
409 only if the client uses a known identifier.
</para>
411 <para><literal>Acquire::http::Proxy-Auto-Detect
</literal> can be used to
412 specify an external command to discover the http proxy to use. Apt expects
413 the command to output the proxy on stdout in the style
414 <literal>http://proxy:port/
</literal>. This will override the
415 generic
<literal>Acquire::http::Proxy
</literal> but not any specific
416 host proxy configuration set via
417 <literal>Acquire::http::Proxy::$HOST
</literal>.
419 See the &squid-deb-proxy-client; package for an example implementation that
420 uses avahi. This option takes precedence over the legacy option name
421 <literal>ProxyAutoDetect
</literal>.
427 <varlistentry><term><option>https
</option></term>
429 The
<literal>Cache-control
</literal>,
<literal>Timeout
</literal>,
430 <literal>AllowRedirect
</literal>,
<literal>Dl-Limit
</literal> and
431 <literal>proxy
</literal> options work for HTTPS URIs in the same way
432 as for the
<literal>http
</literal> method, and default to the same
433 values if they are not explicitly set. The
434 <literal>Pipeline-Depth
</literal> option is not yet supported.
437 <para><literal>CaInfo
</literal> suboption specifies place of file that
438 holds info about trusted certificates.
439 <literal><host
>::CaInfo
</literal> is the corresponding per-host option.
440 <literal>Verify-Peer
</literal> boolean suboption determines whether or not the
441 server's host certificate should be verified against trusted certificates.
442 <literal><host
>::Verify-Peer
</literal> is the corresponding per-host option.
443 <literal>Verify-Host
</literal> boolean suboption determines whether or not the
444 server's hostname should be verified.
445 <literal><host
>::Verify-Host
</literal> is the corresponding per-host option.
446 <literal>SslCert
</literal> determines what certificate to use for client
447 authentication.
<literal><host
>::SslCert
</literal> is the corresponding per-host option.
448 <literal>SslKey
</literal> determines what private key to use for client
449 authentication.
<literal><host
>::SslKey
</literal> is the corresponding per-host option.
450 <literal>SslForceVersion
</literal> overrides default SSL version to use.
451 It can contain either of the strings '
<literal>TLSv1
</literal>' or
452 '
<literal>SSLv3
</literal>'.
453 <literal><host
>::SslForceVersion
</literal> is the corresponding per-host option.
454 </para></listitem></varlistentry>
456 <varlistentry><term><option>ftp
</option></term>
458 <literal>ftp::Proxy
</literal> sets the default proxy to use for FTP URIs.
459 It is in the standard form of
<literal>ftp://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/
</literal>.
460 Per host proxies can also be specified by using the form
461 <literal>ftp::Proxy::
<host
></literal> with the special keyword
<literal>DIRECT
</literal>
462 meaning to use no proxies. If no one of the above settings is specified,
463 <envar>ftp_proxy
</envar> environment variable
464 will be used. To use an FTP
465 proxy you will have to set the
<literal>ftp::ProxyLogin
</literal> script in the
466 configuration file. This entry specifies the commands to send to tell
467 the proxy server what to connect to. Please see
468 &configureindex; for an example of
469 how to do this. The substitution variables representing the corresponding
470 URI component are
<literal>$(PROXY_USER)
</literal>,
471 <literal>$(PROXY_PASS)
</literal>,
<literal>$(SITE_USER)
</literal>,
472 <literal>$(SITE_PASS)
</literal>,
<literal>$(SITE)
</literal> and
473 <literal>$(SITE_PORT)
</literal>.
</para>
475 <para>The option
<literal>timeout
</literal> sets the timeout timer used by the method;
476 this value applies to the connection as well as the data timeout.
</para>
478 <para>Several settings are provided to control passive mode. Generally it is
479 safe to leave passive mode on; it works in nearly every environment.
480 However, some situations require that passive mode be disabled and port
481 mode FTP used instead. This can be done globally or for connections that
482 go through a proxy or for a specific host (see the sample config file
483 for examples).
</para>
485 <para>It is possible to proxy FTP over HTTP by setting the
<envar>ftp_proxy
</envar>
486 environment variable to an HTTP URL - see the discussion of the http method
487 above for syntax. You cannot set this in the configuration file and it is
488 not recommended to use FTP over HTTP due to its low efficiency.
</para>
490 <para>The setting
<literal>ForceExtended
</literal> controls the use of RFC2428
491 <literal>EPSV
</literal> and
<literal>EPRT
</literal> commands. The default is false, which means
492 these commands are only used if the control connection is IPv6. Setting this
493 to true forces their use even on IPv4 connections. Note that most FTP servers
494 do not support RFC2428.
</para></listitem>
497 <varlistentry><term><option>cdrom
</option></term>
499 For URIs using the
<literal>cdrom
</literal> method, the only configurable
500 option is the mount point,
<literal>cdrom::Mount
</literal>, which must be
501 the mount point for the CD-ROM (or DVD, or whatever) drive as specified in
502 <filename>/etc/fstab
</filename>. It is possible to provide alternate mount
503 and unmount commands if your mount point cannot be listed in the fstab.
504 The syntax is to put
<literallayout>/cdrom/::Mount "foo";
</literallayout> within
505 the
<literal>cdrom
</literal> block. It is important to have the trailing slash.
506 Unmount commands can be specified using UMount.
510 <varlistentry><term><option>gpgv
</option></term>
512 For GPGV URIs the only configurable option is
<literal>gpgv::Options
</literal>,
513 which passes additional parameters to gpgv.
517 <varlistentry><term><option>CompressionTypes
</option></term>
518 <listitem><para>List of compression types which are understood by the acquire methods.
519 Files like
<filename>Packages
</filename> can be available in various compression formats.
520 By default the acquire methods can decompress
<command>bzip2
</command>,
<command>lzma
</command>
521 and
<command>gzip
</command> compressed files; with this setting more formats can be added
522 on the fly or the used method can be changed. The syntax for this is:
523 <synopsis>Acquire::CompressionTypes::
<replaceable>FileExtension
</replaceable> "<replaceable>Methodname</replaceable>";
</synopsis>
524 </para><para>Also, the
<literal>Order
</literal> subgroup can be used to define in which order
525 the acquire system will try to download the compressed files. The acquire system will try the first
526 and proceed with the next compression type in this list on error, so to prefer one over the other type
527 simply add the preferred type first - default types not already added will be implicitly appended
528 to the end of the list, so e.g.
<synopsis>Acquire::CompressionTypes::Order:: "gz";
</synopsis> can
529 be used to prefer
<command>gzip
</command> compressed files over
<command>bzip2
</command> and
<command>lzma
</command>.
530 If
<command>lzma
</command> should be preferred over
<command>gzip
</command> and
<command>bzip2
</command> the
531 configure setting should look like this:
<synopsis>Acquire::CompressionTypes::Order { "lzma"; "gz"; };
</synopsis>
532 It is not needed to add
<literal>bz2
</literal> to the list explicitly as it will be added automatically.
</para>
534 <literal>Dir::Bin::
<replaceable>Methodname
</replaceable></literal>
535 will be checked at run time. If this option has been set, the
536 method will only be used if this file exists; e.g. for the
537 <literal>bzip2
</literal> method (the inbuilt) setting is:
538 <literallayout>Dir::Bin::bzip2 "/bin/bzip2";
</literallayout>
539 Note also that list entries specified on the command line will be added at the end of the list
540 specified in the configuration files, but before the default entries. To prefer a type in this case
541 over the ones specified in the configuration files you can set the option direct - not in list style.
542 This will not override the defined list; it will only prefix the list with this type.
</para>
543 <para>The special type
<literal>uncompressed
</literal> can be used to give uncompressed files a
544 preference, but note that most archives don't provide uncompressed files so this is mostly only
545 useable for local mirrors.
</para></listitem>
548 <varlistentry><term><option>GzipIndexes
</option></term>
550 When downloading
<literal>gzip
</literal> compressed indexes (Packages, Sources, or
551 Translations), keep them gzip compressed locally instead of unpacking
552 them. This saves quite a lot of disk space at the expense of more CPU
553 requirements when building the local package caches. False by default.
557 <varlistentry><term><option>Languages
</option></term>
558 <listitem><para>The Languages subsection controls which
<filename>Translation
</filename> files are downloaded
559 and in which order APT tries to display the description-translations. APT will try to display the first
560 available description in the language which is listed first. Languages can be defined with their
561 short or long language codes. Note that not all archives provide
<filename>Translation
</filename>
562 files for every language - the long language codes are especially rare.
</para>
563 <para>The default list includes "environment" and "en". "
<literal>environment
</literal>" has a special meaning here:
564 it will be replaced at runtime with the language codes extracted from the <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal> environment variable.
565 It will also ensure that these codes are not included twice in the list. If <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal>
566 is set to "C" only the
<filename>Translation-en
</filename> file (if available) will be used.
567 To force APT to use no Translation file use the setting
<literal>Acquire::Languages=none
</literal>. "
<literal>none
</literal>"
568 is another special meaning code which will stop the search for a suitable <filename>Translation</filename> file.
569 This tells APT to download these translations too, without actually
570 using them unless the environment specifies the languages. So the
571 following example configuration will result in the order "en, de" in an
572 English locale or "de, en" in a German one. Note that "fr" is
573 downloaded, but not used unless APT is used in a French locale (where
574 the order would be "fr, de, en").
575 <programlisting>Acquire::Languages { "environment"; "de"; "en"; "none"; "fr"; };
</programlisting></para>
576 <para>Note: To prevent problems resulting from APT being executed in different environments
577 (e.g. by different users or by other programs) all Translation files which are found in
578 <filename>/var/lib/apt/lists/
</filename> will be added to the end of the list
579 (after an implicit "
<literal>none
</literal>").</para>
583 <varlistentry><term><option>ForceIPv4</option></term>
585 When downloading, force to use only the IPv4 protocol.
589 <varlistentry><term><option>ForceIPv6</option></term>
591 When downloading, force to use only the IPv6 protocol.
598 <refsect1><title>Directories</title>
600 <para>The <literal>Dir::State</literal> section has directories that pertain to local
601 state information. <literal>lists</literal> is the directory to place downloaded
602 package lists in and <literal>status</literal> is the name of the &dpkg; status file.
603 <literal>preferences</literal> is the name of the APT <filename>preferences</filename> file.
604 <literal>Dir::State</literal> contains the default directory to prefix on all
605 sub-items if they do not start with <filename>/</filename> or <filename>./</filename>.</para>
607 <para><literal>Dir::Cache</literal> contains locations pertaining to local cache
608 information, such as the two package caches <literal>srcpkgcache</literal> and
609 <literal>pkgcache</literal> as well as the location to place downloaded archives,
610 <literal>Dir::Cache::archives</literal>. Generation of caches can be turned off
611 by setting <literal>pkgcache</literal> or <literal>srcpkgcache</literal> to
612 <literal>""</literal>. This will slow down startup but save disk space. It
613 is probably preferable to turn off the pkgcache rather than the srcpkgcache.
614 Like <literal>Dir::State</literal> the default directory is contained in
615 <literal>Dir::Cache</literal></para>
617 <para><literal>Dir::Etc</literal> contains the location of configuration files,
618 <literal>sourcelist</literal> gives the location of the sourcelist and
619 <literal>main</literal> is the default configuration file (setting has no effect,
620 unless it is done from the config file specified by
621 <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar>).</para>
623 <para>The <literal>Dir::Parts</literal> setting reads in all the config fragments in
624 lexical order from the directory specified. After this is done then the
625 main config file is loaded.</para>
627 <para>Binary programs are pointed to by <literal>Dir::Bin</literal>. <literal>Dir::Bin::Methods</literal>
628 specifies the location of the method handlers and <literal>gzip</literal>,
629 <literal>bzip2</literal>, <literal>lzma</literal>,
630 <literal>dpkg</literal>, <literal>apt-get</literal> <literal>dpkg-source</literal>
631 <literal>dpkg-buildpackage</literal> and <literal>apt-cache</literal> specify the location
632 of the respective programs.</para>
635 The configuration item <literal>RootDir</literal> has a special
636 meaning. If set, all paths in <literal>Dir::</literal> will be
637 relative to <literal>RootDir</literal>, <emphasis>even paths that
638 are specified absolutely</emphasis>. So, for instance, if
639 <literal>RootDir</literal> is set to
640 <filename>/tmp/staging</filename> and
641 <literal>Dir::State::status</literal> is set to
642 <filename>/var/lib/dpkg/status</filename>, then the status file
644 <filename>/tmp/staging/var/lib/dpkg/status</filename>.
648 The <literal>Ignore-Files-Silently</literal> list can be used to specify
649 which files APT should silently ignore while parsing the files in the
650 fragment directories. Per default a file which end with <literal>.disabled</literal>,
651 <literal>~</literal>, <literal>.bak</literal> or <literal>.dpkg-[a-z]+</literal>
652 is silently ignored. As seen in the last default value these patterns can use regular
657 <refsect1><title>APT in DSelect</title>
659 When APT is used as a &dselect; method several configuration directives
660 control the default behavior. These are in the <literal>DSelect</literal> section.</para>
663 <varlistentry><term><option>Clean</option></term>
664 <listitem><para>Cache Clean mode; this value may be one of
665 <literal>always</literal>, <literal>prompt</literal>,
666 <literal>auto</literal>, <literal>pre-auto</literal> and
667 <literal>never</literal>.
668 <literal>always</literal> and <literal>prompt</literal> will remove
669 all packages from the cache after upgrading, <literal>prompt</literal>
670 (the default) does so conditionally.
671 <literal>auto</literal> removes only those packages which are no longer
672 downloadable (replaced with a new version for instance).
673 <literal>pre-auto</literal> performs this action before downloading
674 new packages.</para></listitem>
677 <varlistentry><term><option>options</option></term>
678 <listitem><para>The contents of this variable are passed to &apt-get; as command line
679 options when it is run for the install phase.</para></listitem>
682 <varlistentry><term><option>Updateoptions</option></term>
683 <listitem><para>The contents of this variable are passed to &apt-get; as command line
684 options when it is run for the update phase.</para></listitem>
687 <varlistentry><term><option>PromptAfterUpdate</option></term>
688 <listitem><para>If true the [U]pdate operation in &dselect; will always prompt to continue.
689 The default is to prompt only on error.</para></listitem>
694 <refsect1><title>How APT calls &dpkg;</title>
695 <para>Several configuration directives control how APT invokes &dpkg;. These are
696 in the <literal>DPkg</literal> section.</para>
699 <varlistentry><term><option>options</option></term>
700 <listitem><para>This is a list of options to pass to &dpkg;. The options must be specified
701 using the list notation and each list item is passed as a single argument
702 to &dpkg;.</para></listitem>
705 <varlistentry><term><option>Pre-Invoke</option></term><term><option>Post-Invoke</option></term>
706 <listitem><para>This is a list of shell commands to run before/after invoking &dpkg;.
707 Like <literal>options</literal> this must be specified in list notation. The
708 commands are invoked in order using <filename>/bin/sh</filename>; should any
709 fail APT will abort.</para></listitem>
712 <varlistentry><term><option>Pre-Install-Pkgs</option></term>
713 <listitem><para>This is a list of shell commands to run before invoking &dpkg;. Like
714 <literal>options</literal> this must be specified in list notation. The commands
715 are invoked in order using <filename>/bin/sh</filename>; should any fail APT
716 will abort. APT will pass the filenames of all .deb files it is going to
717 install to the commands, one per line on the requested file descriptor, defaulting
718 to standard input.</para>
720 <para>Version 2 of this protocol dumps more information, including the
721 protocol version, the APT configuration space and the packages, files
722 and versions being changed. Version 3 adds the architecture and <literal>MultiArch</literal>
723 flag to each version being dumped.</para>
725 <para>The version of the protocol to be used for the command
726 <literal><replaceable>cmd</replaceable></literal> can be chosen by setting
727 <literal>DPkg::Tools::options::<replaceable>cmd</replaceable>::Version</literal>
728 accordingly, the default being version 1. If APT isn't supporting the requested
729 version it will send the information in the highest version it has support for instead.
732 <para>The file descriptor to be used to send the information can be requested with
733 <literal>DPkg::Tools::options::<replaceable>cmd</replaceable>::InfoFD</literal>
734 which defaults to <literal>0</literal> for standard input and is available since
735 version 0.9.11. Support for the option can be detected by looking for the environment
736 variable <envar>APT_HOOK_INFO_FD</envar> which contains the number of the used
737 file descriptor as a confirmation.</para>
741 <varlistentry><term><option>Run-Directory</option></term>
742 <listitem><para>APT chdirs to this directory before invoking &dpkg;, the default is
743 <filename>/</filename>.</para></listitem>
746 <varlistentry><term><option>Build-options</option></term>
747 <listitem><para>These options are passed to &dpkg-buildpackage; when compiling packages;
748 the default is to disable signing and produce all binaries.</para></listitem>
752 <refsect2><title>dpkg trigger usage (and related options)</title>
753 <para>APT can call &dpkg; in such a way as to let it make aggressive use of triggers over
754 multiple calls of &dpkg;. Without further options &dpkg; will use triggers once each time it runs.
755 Activating these options can therefore decrease the time needed to perform the
756 install or upgrade. Note that it is intended to activate these options per default in the
757 future, but as it drastically changes the way APT calls &dpkg; it needs a lot more testing.
758 <emphasis>These options are therefore currently experimental and should not be used in
759 production environments.</emphasis> It also breaks progress reporting such that all front-ends will
760 currently stay around half (or more) of the time in the 100% state while it actually configures
762 <para>Note that it is not guaranteed that APT will support these options or that these options will
763 not cause (big) trouble in the future. If you have understand the current risks and problems with
764 these options, but are brave enough to help testing them, create a new configuration file and test a
765 combination of options. Please report any bugs, problems and improvements you encounter and make sure
766 to note which options you have used in your reports. Asking &dpkg; for help could also be useful for
767 debugging proposes, see e.g. <command>dpkg --audit</command>. A defensive option combination would be
768 <literallayout>DPkg::NoTriggers "true";
769 PackageManager::Configure "smart";
770 DPkg::ConfigurePending "true";
771 DPkg::TriggersPending "true";
</literallayout></para>
774 <varlistentry><term><option>DPkg::NoTriggers
</option></term>
775 <listitem><para>Add the no triggers flag to all
&dpkg; calls (except the ConfigurePending call).
776 See
&dpkg; if you are interested in what this actually means. In short:
&dpkg; will not run the
777 triggers when this flag is present unless it is explicitly called to do so in an extra call.
778 Note that this option exists (undocumented) also in older APT versions with a slightly different
779 meaning: Previously these option only append --no-triggers to the configure calls to
&dpkg; -
780 now APT will also add this flag to the unpack and remove calls.
</para></listitem>
782 <varlistentry><term><option>PackageManager::Configure
</option></term>
783 <listitem><para>Valid values are "
<literal>all
</literal>",
784 "<literal>smart
</literal>" and "<literal>no
</literal>".
785 The default value is "<literal>all
</literal>", which causes APT to
786 configure all packages. The "<literal>smart
</literal>" way is to
787 configure only packages which need to be configured before another
788 package can be unpacked (Pre-Depends), and let the rest be configured
789 by &dpkg; with a call generated by the ConfigurePending option (see
790 below). On the other hand, "<literal>no
</literal>" will not configure
791 anything, and totally relies on &dpkg; for configuration (which at the
792 moment will fail if a Pre-Depends is encountered). Setting this option
793 to any value other than <literal>all</literal> will implicitly also
794 activate the next option by default, as otherwise the system could end
795 in an unconfigured and potentially unbootable state.</para></listitem>
797 <varlistentry><term><option>DPkg::ConfigurePending</option></term>
798 <listitem><para>If this option is set APT will call <command>dpkg --configure --pending</command>
799 to let &dpkg; handle all required configurations and triggers. This option is activated automatically
800 per default if the previous option is not set to <literal>all</literal>, but deactivating it could be useful
801 if you want to run APT multiple times in a row - e.g. in an installer. In these sceneries you could
802 deactivate this option in all but the last run.</para></listitem>
804 <varlistentry><term><option>DPkg::TriggersPending</option></term>
805 <listitem><para>Useful for the <literal>smart</literal> configuration as a package which has pending
806 triggers is not considered as <literal>installed</literal>, and &dpkg; treats them as <literal>unpacked</literal>
807 currently which is a showstopper for Pre-Dependencies (see debbugs #526774). Note that this will
808 process all triggers, not only the triggers needed to configure this package.</para></listitem>
810 <varlistentry><term><option>OrderList::Score::Immediate</option></term>
811 <listitem><para>Essential packages (and their dependencies) should be configured immediately
812 after unpacking. It is a good idea to do this quite early in the upgrade process as these
813 configure calls also currently require <literal>DPkg::TriggersPending</literal> which
814 will run quite a few triggers (which may not be needed). Essentials get per default a high score
815 but the immediate flag is relatively low (a package which has a Pre-Depends is rated higher).
816 These option and the others in the same group can be used to change the scoring. The following
817 example shows the settings with their default values.
818 <literallayout>OrderList::Score {
831 <title>Periodic and Archives options</title>
832 <para><literal>APT::Periodic</literal> and <literal>APT::Archives</literal>
833 groups of options configure behavior of apt periodic updates, which is
834 done by the <literal>/etc/cron.daily/apt</literal> script. See the top of
835 this script for the brief documentation of these options.
840 <title>Debug options</title>
842 Enabling options in the <literal>Debug::</literal> section will
843 cause debugging information to be sent to the standard error
844 stream of the program utilizing the <literal>apt</literal>
845 libraries, or enable special program modes that are primarily
846 useful for debugging the behavior of <literal>apt</literal>.
847 Most of these options are not interesting to a normal user, but a
853 <literal>Debug::pkgProblemResolver</literal> enables output
854 about the decisions made by
855 <literal>dist-upgrade, upgrade, install, remove, purge</literal>.
861 <literal>Debug::NoLocking</literal> disables all file
862 locking. This can be used to run some operations (for
863 instance, <literal>apt-get -s install</literal>) as a
870 <literal>Debug::pkgDPkgPM</literal> prints out the actual
871 command line each time that <literal>apt</literal> invokes
878 <literal>Debug::IdentCdrom</literal> disables the inclusion
879 of statfs data in CD-ROM IDs. <!-- TODO: provide a
880 motivating example, except I haven't a clue why you'd want
888 A full list of debugging options to apt follows.
893 <term><option>Debug::Acquire::cdrom</option></term>
897 Print information related to accessing
898 <literal>cdrom://</literal> sources.
904 <term><option>Debug::Acquire::ftp</option></term>
908 Print information related to downloading packages using
915 <term><option>Debug::Acquire::http</option></term>
919 Print information related to downloading packages using
926 <term><option>Debug::Acquire::https</option></term>
930 Print information related to downloading packages using
937 <term><option>Debug::Acquire::gpgv</option></term>
941 Print information related to verifying cryptographic
942 signatures using <literal>gpg</literal>.
948 <term><option>Debug::aptcdrom</option></term>
952 Output information about the process of accessing
953 collections of packages stored on CD-ROMs.
959 <term><option>Debug::BuildDeps</option></term>
962 Describes the process of resolving build-dependencies in
969 <term><option>Debug::Hashes</option></term>
972 Output each cryptographic hash that is generated by the
973 <literal>apt</literal> libraries.
979 <term><option>Debug::IdentCDROM</option></term>
982 Do not include information from <literal>statfs</literal>,
983 namely the number of used and free blocks on the CD-ROM
984 filesystem, when generating an ID for a CD-ROM.
990 <term><option>Debug::NoLocking</option></term>
993 Disable all file locking. For instance, this will allow
994 two instances of <quote><literal>apt-get
995 update</literal></quote> to run at the same time.
1001 <term><option>Debug::pkgAcquire</option></term>
1005 Log when items are added to or removed from the global
1012 <term><option>Debug::pkgAcquire::Auth</option></term>
1015 Output status messages and errors related to verifying
1016 checksums and cryptographic signatures of downloaded files.
1022 <term><option>Debug::pkgAcquire::Diffs</option></term>
1025 Output information about downloading and applying package
1026 index list diffs, and errors relating to package index list
1033 <term><option>Debug::pkgAcquire::RRed</option></term>
1037 Output information related to patching apt package lists
1038 when downloading index diffs instead of full indices.
1044 <term><option>Debug::pkgAcquire::Worker</option></term>
1048 Log all interactions with the sub-processes that actually
1055 <term><option>Debug::pkgAutoRemove</option></term>
1059 Log events related to the automatically-installed status of
1060 packages and to the removal of unused packages.
1066 <term><option>Debug::pkgDepCache::AutoInstall</option></term>
1069 Generate debug messages describing which packages are being
1070 automatically installed to resolve dependencies. This
1071 corresponds to the initial auto-install pass performed in,
1072 e.g., <literal>apt-get install</literal>, and not to the
1073 full <literal>apt</literal> dependency resolver; see
1074 <literal>Debug::pkgProblemResolver</literal> for that.
1080 <term><option>Debug::pkgDepCache::Marker</option></term>
1083 Generate debug messages describing which packages are marked
1084 as keep/install/remove while the ProblemResolver does his work.
1085 Each addition or deletion may trigger additional actions;
1086 they are shown indented two additional spaces under the original entry.
1087 The format for each line is <literal>MarkKeep</literal>,
1088 <literal>MarkDelete</literal> or <literal>MarkInstall</literal> followed by
1089 <literal>package-name <a.b.c -> d.e.f | x.y.z> (section)</literal>
1090 where <literal>a.b.c</literal> is the current version of the package,
1091 <literal>d.e.f</literal> is the version considered for installation and
1092 <literal>x.y.z</literal> is a newer version, but not considered for installation
1093 (because of a low pin score). The later two can be omitted if there is none or if
1094 it is the same as the installed version.
1095 <literal>section</literal> is the name of the section the package appears in.
1101 <term><option>Debug::pkgDPkgPM</option></term>
1104 When invoking &dpkg;, output the precise command line with
1105 which it is being invoked, with arguments separated by a
1106 single space character.
1112 <term><option>Debug::pkgDPkgProgressReporting</option></term>
1115 Output all the data received from &dpkg; on the status file
1116 descriptor and any errors encountered while parsing it.
1122 <term><option>Debug::pkgOrderList</option></term>
1126 Generate a trace of the algorithm that decides the order in
1127 which <literal>apt</literal> should pass packages to
1134 <term><option>Debug::pkgPackageManager</option></term>
1138 Output status messages tracing the steps performed when
1145 <term><option>Debug::pkgPolicy</option></term>
1149 Output the priority of each package list on startup.
1155 <term><option>Debug::pkgProblemResolver</option></term>
1159 Trace the execution of the dependency resolver (this
1160 applies only to what happens when a complex dependency
1161 problem is encountered).
1167 <term><option>Debug::pkgProblemResolver::ShowScores</option></term>
1170 Display a list of all installed packages with their calculated score
1171 used by the pkgProblemResolver. The description of the package
1172 is the same as described in <literal>Debug::pkgDepCache::Marker</literal>
1178 <term><option>Debug::sourceList</option></term>
1182 Print information about the vendors read from
1183 <filename>/etc/apt/vendors.list</filename>.
1189 <term><option>Debug::RunScripts</option></term>
1192 Display the external commands that are called by apt hooks.
1193 This includes e.g. the config options
1194 <literal>DPkg::{Pre,Post}-Invoke</literal> or
1195 <literal>APT::Update::{Pre,Post}-Invoke</literal>.
1200 <!-- 2009/07/11 Currently used nowhere. The corresponding code
1203 <term><literal>Debug::Vendor</literal></term>
1207 Print information about each vendor.
1216 <refsect1><title>Examples</title>
1217 <para>&configureindex; is a
1218 configuration file showing example values for all possible
1222 <refsect1><title>Files</title>
1228 <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
1229 <para>&apt-cache;, &apt-config;<!-- ? reading apt.conf -->, &apt-preferences;.</para>