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(Clean-Installed))
  59 Defaults to on. When turned on the autoclean feature will remove any pacakge
  60 which can no longer be downloaded from the cache. If turned off then
  61 packages that are locally installed are also excluded from cleaning - but
  62 note that APT provides no direct means to reinstall them.
  63
  64 dit(bf(Immediate-Configure))
  65 Disable Immedate Configuration; This dangerous option disables some
  66 of APT's ordering code to cause it to make fewer dpkg calls. Doing
  67 so may be necessary on some extremely slow single user systems but
  68 is very dangerous and may cause package install scripts to fail or worse.
  69 Use at your own risk.
  70
  71 dit(bf(Force-LoopBreak))
  72 Never Enable this option unless you -really- know what you are doing. It
  73 permits APT to temporarily remove an essential package to break a
  74 Conflicts/Conflicts or Conflicts/Pre-Depend loop between two essential
  75 packages. SUCH A LOOP SHOULD NEVER EXIST AND IS A GRAVE BUG. This option will
  76 work if the essential packages are not tar, gzip, libc, dpkg, bash or
  77 anything that those packages depend on.
  78
  79 dit(bf(Get))
  80 The Get subsection controls the bf(apt-get(8)) tool, please see its
  81 documentation for more information about the options here.
  82
  83 dit(bf(Cache))
  84 The Cache subsection controls the bf(apt-cache(8)) tool, please see its
  85 documentation for more information about the options here.
  86
  87 dit(bf(CDROM))
  88 The CDROM subsection controls the bf(apt-cdrom(8)) tool, please see its
  89 documentation for more information about the options here.
  90
  91 enddit()
  92
  93 manpagesection(The Acquire Group)
  94 The bf(Acquire) group of options controls the download of packages and the
  95 URI handlers.
  96
  97 startdit()
  98 dit(bf(Queue-Mode))
  99 Queuing mode; bf(Queue-Mode) can be one of bf(host) or bf(access) which
 100 determins how APT parallelizes outgoing connections. bf(host) means that
 101 one connection per target host will be opened, bf(access) means that one
 102 connection per URI type will be opened.
 103
 104 dit(bf(Retries))
 105 Number of retries to perform. If this is non-zero apt will retry failed
 106 files the given number of times.
 107
 108 dit(bf(Acquire::Source-Symlinks))
 109 Use symlinks for source archives. If set to true then source archives will
 110 be symlinked when possible instead of copying. True is the default
 111
 112 dit(bf(http))
 113 HTTP URIs; http::Proxy is the default http proxy to use. It is in the standard
 114 form of em(http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/). Per host proxies can also
 115 be specified by using the form http::Proxy::<host> with the special keyword
 116 em(DIRECT) meaning to use no proxies. The em($http_proxy) environment variable
 117 will override all settings.
 118
 119 Three settings are provided for cache control with HTTP/1.1 complient proxy
 120 caches. bf(No-Cache) tells the proxy to not used its cached response under
 121 any circumstances, bf(Max-Age) is sent only for index files and tells the
 122 cache to refresh its object if it is older than the given number of seconds.
 123 Debian updates its index files daily so the default is 1 day. bf(No-Store)
 124 specifies that the cache should never store this request, it is only
 125 set for archive files. This may be usefull to prevent polluting a proxy cache
 126 with very large .deb files. Note: Squid 2.0.2 does not support any of
 127 these options.
 128
 129 One setting is provided to control the pipeline depth in cases where the
 130 remote server is not RFC conforming or buggy (such as Squid 2.0.2)
 131 Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth can be a value from 0 to 5 indicating how many
 132 outstanding requests APT should send.
 133
 134 dit(bf(ftp))
 135 FTP URis; ftp::Proxy is the default proxy server to use. It is in the
 136 standard form of em(http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/) and is overriden
 137 by the ftp_proxy environment variable. To use a ftp proxy you will have to
 138 set the ftp::ProxyLogin script in the configuration file. This entry
 139 specifies the commands to send to tell the proxy server what to connect
 140 to. Please see em(/usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf) for an example of how
 141 to do this. The subsitution variables available are $(PROXY_USER),
 142 $(PROXY_PASS), $(SITE_USER), $(SITE_PASS), $(SITE), and $(SITE_PORT).
 143 Each is taken from it's respective URI component.
 144
 145 Several settings are provided to control passive mode. Generally it is safe
 146 to leave passive mode on, it works in nearly every environment. However some
 147 situations require that passive mode be disabled and port mode ftp used
 148 instead. This can be done globally, for connections that go through a proxy
 149 or for a specific host (See the sample config file for examples)
 150
 151 dit(bf(cdrom))
 152 CDROM URIs; the only setting for CDROM URIs is the mount point, cdrom::Mount
 153 which must be the mount point for the CDROM drive as specified in /etc/fstab.
 154 It is possible to provide alternate mount and unmount commands if your
 155 mount point cannot be listed in the fstab (such as an SMB mount). The syntax
 156 is to put "/cdrom/"::Mount "foo"; within the cdrom block. It is important to
 157 have the trailing slash. Unmount commands can be specified using UMount.
 158
 159 enddit()
 160
 161 manpagesection(Directories)
 162 The bf(Dir::State) section has directories that pertain to local state
 163 information. bf(lists) is the directory to place downloaded package lists
 164 in and bf(status) is the name of the dpkg status file. bf(Dir::State)
 165 contains the default directory to prefix on all sub items if they do not
 166 start with em(/) or em(./). bf(xstatus) and bf(userstatus) are for future
 167 use.
 168
 169 bf(Dir::Cache) contains locations pertaining to local cache information, such
 170 as the two package caches bf(srcpkgcache) and bf(pkgcache) as well as the
 171 location to place downloaded archives, bf(Dir::Cache::archives). Like
 172 bf(Dir::State) the default directory is contained in bf(Dir::Cache)
 173
 174 bf(Dir::Etc) contains the location of configuration files, bf(sourcelist)
 175 gives the location of the sourcelist and bf(main) is the default configuration
 176 file (setting has no effect)
 177
 178 Binary programs are pointed to by bf(Dir::Bin). bf(methods) specifies the
 179 location of the method handlers and bf(gzip), bf(dpkg), bf(apt-get),
 180 bf(dpkg-source), bf(dpkg-buildpackage) and
 181 bf(apt-cache) specify the location of the respective programs.
 182
 183 manpagesection(APT in DSelect)
 184 When APT is used as a bf(dselect(8)) method several configuration directives
 185 control the default behavoir. These are in the bf(DSelect) section.
 186
 187 startdit()
 188 dit(bf(Clean))
 189 Cache Clean mode; this value may be one of always, auto, prompt and never.
 190 always will remove all archives after they have been downloaded while auto
 191 will only remove things that are no longer downloadable (replaced with a new
 192 version for instance)
 193
 194 dit(bf(Options))
 195 The contents of this variable is passed to bf(apt-get(8)) as command line
 196 options when it is run for the install phase.
 197
 198 dit(bf(UpdateOptions))
 199 The contents of this variable is passed to bf(apt-get(8)) as command line
 200 options when it is run for the update phase.
 201
 202 dit(bf(PromptAfterUpdate))
 203 If true the [U]pdate operation in dselect will always prompt to continue.
 204 The default is to prompt only on error.
 205 enddit()
 206
 207 manpagesection(How APT calls DPkg)
 208 Several configuration directives control how APT invokes dpkg. These are in
 209 the bf(DPkg) section.
 210
 211 startdit()
 212 dit(bf(Options))
 213 This is a list of options to pass to dpkg. The options must be specified
 214 using the list notation and each list item is passed as a single arugment
 215 to dpkg.
 216
 217 dit(bf(Pre-Invoke), bf(Post-Invoke))
 218 This is a list of shell commands to run before/after invoking dpkg. Like
 219 bf(Options) this must be specified in list notation. The commands
 220 are invoked in order using /bin/sh, should any fail APT will abort.
 221
 222 dit(bf(BPre-Install-Pkgs))
 223 This is a list of shell commands to run before invoking dpkg. Like
 224 bf(Options) this must be specified in list notation. The commands
 225 are invoked in order using /bin/sh, should any fail APT will abort.
 226 Apt will pass to the commands on standard input the filenames of all
 227 .deb files it is going to install, one per line.
 228
 229 dit(bf(Run-Directory))
 230 APT chdirs to this directory before invoking dpkg, the default is /.
 231
 232 dit(bf(Build-Options))
 233 These options are passed to dpkg-buildpackage when compiling packages,
 234 the default is to disable signing and produce all binaries.
 235
 236 enddit()
 237
 238 manpagesection(Debug Options)
 239 Most of the options in the bf(debug) section are not interesting to the
 240 normal user, however bf(Debug::pkgProblemResolver) shows interesting
 241 output about the decisions dist-upgrade makes. bf(Debug::NoLocking)
 242 disables file locking so apt can do some operations as non-root and
 243 bf(Debug::pkgDPkgPM) will print out the command line for each dpkg
 244 invokation. bf(Debug::IdentCdrom) will disable the inclusion of statfs
 245 data in CDROM IDs.
 246
 247 manpagesection(EXAMPLES)
 248 bf(/usr/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf) contains a sample configuration file
 249 showing the default values for all possible options.
 250
 251 manpagesection(FILES)
 252 /etc/apt/apt.conf
 253
 254 manpageseealso()
 255 apt-cache (8),
 256 apt-get (8)
 257
 258 manpagebugs()
 259 See http://bugs.debian.org/apt.  If you wish to report a
 260 bug in bf(apt-get), please see bf(/usr/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt)
 261 or the bf(bug(1)) command.
 262
 263 manpageauthor()
 264 apt-get was written by the APT team <apt@packages.debian.org>.