doc/apt.conf.5.xml

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   5 <!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM "apt.ent">
   6 %aptent;
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   9
  10 <refentry>
  11
  12  <refentryinfo>
  13    &apt-author.jgunthorpe;
  14    &apt-author.team;
  15    &apt-email;
  16    &apt-product;
  17    <!-- The last update date -->
  18    <date>29 February 2004</date>
  19  </refentryinfo>
  20
  21  <refmeta>
  22    <refentrytitle>apt.conf</refentrytitle>
  23    <manvolnum>5</manvolnum>
  24  </refmeta>
  25
  26  <!-- Man page title -->
  27  <refnamediv>
  28     <refname>apt.conf</refname>
  29     <refpurpose>Configuration file for APT</refpurpose>
  30  </refnamediv>
  31
  32  <refsect1><title>Description</title>
  33    <para><filename>apt.conf</filename> is the main configuration file for the APT suite of
  34    tools, all tools make use of the configuration file and a common command line
  35    parser to provide a uniform environment. When an APT tool starts up it will
  36    read the configuration specified by the <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar> environment
  37    variable (if any) and then read the files in <literal>Dir::Etc::Parts</literal>
  38    then read the main configuration file specified by
  39    <literal>Dir::Etc::main</literal> then finally apply the
  40    command line options to override the configuration directives, possibly
  41    loading even more config files.</para>
  42
  43    <para>The configuration file is organized in a tree with options organized into
  44    functional groups. option specification is given with a double colon
  45    notation, for instance <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes</literal> is an option within
  46    the APT tool group, for the Get tool. options do not inherit from their
  47    parent groups.</para>
  48
  49    <para>Syntactically the configuration language is modeled after what the ISC tools
  50    such as bind and dhcp use.  Lines starting with
  51    <literal>//</literal> are treated as comments (ignored).
  52    Each line is of the form
  53    <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";</literal> The trailing
  54    semicolon is required and the quotes are optional. A new scope can be
  55    opened with curly braces, like:</para>
  56
  57 <informalexample><programlisting>
  58 APT {
  59   Get {
  60     Assume-Yes "true";
  61     Fix-Broken "true";
  62   };
  63 };
  64 </programlisting></informalexample>
  65
  66    <para>with newlines placed to make it more readable. Lists can be created by
  67    opening a scope and including a single word enclosed in quotes followed by a
  68    semicolon. Multiple entries can be included, each separated by a semicolon.</para>
  69
  70 <informalexample><programlisting>
  71 DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt";};
  72 </programlisting></informalexample>
  73
  74    <para>In general the sample configuration file in
  75    <filename>&docdir;examples/apt.conf</filename> &configureindex;
  76    is a good guide for how it should look.</para>
  77
  78    <para>Two specials are allowed, <literal>#include</literal> and <literal>#clear</literal>
  79    <literal>#include</literal> will include the given file, unless the filename
  80    ends in a slash, then the whole directory is included.
  81    <literal>#clear</literal> is used to erase a list of names.</para>
  82
  83    <para>All of the APT tools take a -o option which allows an arbitrary configuration
  84    directive to be specified on the command line. The syntax is a full option
  85    name (<literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes</literal> for instance) followed by an equals
  86    sign then the new value of the option. Lists can be appended too by adding
  87    a trailing :: to the list name.</para>
  88  </refsect1>
  89
  90  <refsect1><title>The APT Group</title>
  91    <para>This group of options controls general APT behavior as well as holding the
  92    options for all of the tools.</para>
  93
  94    <variablelist>
  95      <varlistentry><term>Architecture</term>
  96      <listitem><para>System Architecture; sets the architecture to use when fetching files and
  97      parsing package lists. The internal default is the architecture apt was
  98      compiled for.</para></listitem>
  99      </varlistentry>
 100
 101      <varlistentry><term>Default-Release</term>
 102          <listitem><para>Default release to install packages from if more than one
 103          version available. Contains release name or release version. Examples: 'stable', 'testing', 'unstable', '4.0', '5.0*'. Release codenames ('etch', 'lenny' etc.) are not allowed now. See also &apt-preferences;.</para></listitem>
 104      </varlistentry>
 105
 106      <varlistentry><term>Ignore-Hold</term>
 107      <listitem><para>Ignore Held packages; This global option causes the problem resolver to
 108      ignore held packages in its decision making.</para></listitem>
 109      </varlistentry>
 110
 111      <varlistentry><term>Clean-Installed</term>
 112      <listitem><para>Defaults to on. When turned on the autoclean feature will remove any packages
 113      which can no longer be downloaded from the cache. If turned off then
 114      packages that are locally installed are also excluded from cleaning - but
 115      note that APT provides no direct means to reinstall them.</para></listitem>
 116      </varlistentry>
 117
 118      <varlistentry><term>Immediate-Configure</term>
 119      <listitem><para>Disable Immediate Configuration; This dangerous option disables some
 120      of APT's ordering code to cause it to make fewer dpkg calls. Doing
 121      so may be necessary on some extremely slow single user systems but
 122      is very dangerous and may cause package install scripts to fail or worse.
 123      Use at your own risk.</para></listitem>
 124      </varlistentry>
 125
 126      <varlistentry><term>Force-LoopBreak</term>
 127      <listitem><para>Never Enable this option unless you -really- know what you are doing. It
 128      permits APT to temporarily remove an essential package to break a
 129      Conflicts/Conflicts or Conflicts/Pre-Depend loop between two essential
 130      packages. SUCH A LOOP SHOULD NEVER EXIST AND IS A GRAVE BUG. This option
 131      will work if the essential packages are not tar, gzip, libc, dpkg, bash or
 132      anything that those packages depend on.</para></listitem>
 133      </varlistentry>
 134
 135      <varlistentry><term>Cache-Limit</term>
 136      <listitem><para>APT uses a fixed size memory mapped cache file to store the 'available'
 137      information. This sets the size of that cache (in bytes).</para></listitem>
 138      </varlistentry>
 139
 140      <varlistentry><term>Build-Essential</term>
 141      <listitem><para>Defines which package(s) are considered essential build dependencies.</para></listitem>
 142      </varlistentry>
 143
 144      <varlistentry><term>Get</term>
 145      <listitem><para>The Get subsection controls the &apt-get; tool, please see its
 146      documentation for more information about the options here.</para></listitem>
 147      </varlistentry>
 148
 149      <varlistentry><term>Cache</term>
 150      <listitem><para>The Cache subsection controls the &apt-cache; tool, please see its
 151      documentation for more information about the options here.</para></listitem>
 152      </varlistentry>
 153
 154      <varlistentry><term>CDROM</term>
 155      <listitem><para>The CDROM subsection controls the &apt-cdrom; tool, please see its
 156      documentation for more information about the options here.</para></listitem>
 157      </varlistentry>
 158    </variablelist>
 159  </refsect1>
 160
 161  <refsect1><title>The Acquire Group</title>
 162    <para>The <literal>Acquire</literal> group of options controls the download of packages
 163    and the URI handlers.
 164
 165    <variablelist>
 166      <varlistentry><term>Queue-Mode</term>
 167      <listitem><para>Queuing mode; <literal>Queue-Mode</literal> can be one of <literal>host</literal> or
 168      <literal>access</literal> which determines how  APT parallelizes outgoing
 169      connections. <literal>host</literal> means that one connection per target host
 170      will be opened, <literal>access</literal> means that one connection per URI type
 171      will be opened.</para></listitem>
 172      </varlistentry>
 173
 174      <varlistentry><term>Retries</term>
 175      <listitem><para>Number of retries to perform. If this is non-zero APT will retry failed
 176      files the given number of times.</para></listitem>
 177      </varlistentry>
 178
 179      <varlistentry><term>Source-Symlinks</term>
 180      <listitem><para>Use symlinks for source archives. If set to true then source archives will
 181      be symlinked when possible instead of copying. True is the default.</para></listitem>
 182      </varlistentry>
 183
 184      <varlistentry><term>http</term>
 185      <listitem><para>HTTP URIs; http::Proxy is the default http proxy to use. It is in the
 186      standard form of <literal>http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/</literal>. Per
 187      host proxies can also be specified by using the form
 188      <literal>http::Proxy::&lt;host&gt;</literal> with the special keyword <literal>DIRECT</literal>
 189      meaning to use no proxies. The <envar>http_proxy</envar> environment variable
 190      will override all settings.</para>
 191
 192      <para>Three settings are provided for cache control with HTTP/1.1 compliant
 193      proxy caches. <literal>No-Cache</literal> tells the proxy to not use its cached
 194      response under any circumstances, <literal>Max-Age</literal> is sent only for
 195      index files and tells the cache to refresh its object if it is older than
 196      the given number of seconds. Debian updates its index files daily so the
 197      default is 1 day. <literal>No-Store</literal> specifies that the cache should never
 198      store this request, it is only set for archive files. This may be useful
 199      to prevent polluting a proxy cache with very large .deb files. Note:
 200      Squid 2.0.2 does not support any of these options.</para>
 201
 202      <para>The option <literal>timeout</literal> sets the timeout timer used by the method,
 203      this applies to all things including connection timeout and data timeout.</para>
 204
 205      <para>One setting is provided to control the pipeline depth in cases where the
 206      remote server is not RFC conforming or buggy (such as Squid 2.0.2)
 207      <literal>Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth</literal> can be a value from 0 to 5
 208      indicating how many outstanding requests APT should send. A value of
 209      zero MUST be specified if the remote host does not properly linger
 210      on TCP connections - otherwise data corruption will occur. Hosts which
 211      require this are in violation of RFC 2068.</para></listitem>
 212      </varlistentry>
 213
 214      <varlistentry><term>ftp</term>
 215      <listitem><para>FTP URIs; ftp::Proxy is the default proxy server to use. It is in the
 216      standard form of <literal>ftp://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/</literal> and is
 217      overridden by the <envar>ftp_proxy</envar> environment variable. To use a ftp
 218      proxy you will have to set the <literal>ftp::ProxyLogin</literal> script in the
 219      configuration file. This entry specifies the commands to send to tell
 220      the proxy server what to connect to. Please see
 221      &configureindex; for an example of
 222      how to do this. The substitution variables available are
 223      <literal>$(PROXY_USER)</literal> <literal>$(PROXY_PASS)</literal> <literal>$(SITE_USER)</literal>
 224      <literal>$(SITE_PASS)</literal> <literal>$(SITE)</literal> and <literal>$(SITE_PORT)</literal>
 225      Each is taken from it's respective URI component.</para>
 226
 227      <para>The option <literal>timeout</literal> sets the timeout timer used by the method,
 228      this applies to all things including connection timeout and data timeout.</para>
 229
 230      <para>Several settings are provided to control passive mode. Generally it is
 231      safe to leave passive mode on, it works in nearly every environment.
 232      However some situations require that passive mode be disabled and port
 233      mode ftp used instead. This can be done globally, for connections that
 234      go through a proxy or for a specific host (See the sample config file
 235      for examples).</para>
 236
 237      <para>It is possible to proxy FTP over HTTP by setting the <envar>ftp_proxy</envar>
 238      environment variable to a http url - see the discussion of the http method
 239      above for syntax. You cannot set this in the configuration file and it is
 240      not recommended to use FTP over HTTP due to its low efficiency.</para>
 241
 242      <para>The setting <literal>ForceExtended</literal> controls the use of RFC2428
 243      <literal>EPSV</literal> and <literal>EPRT</literal> commands. The default is false, which means
 244      these commands are only used if the control connection is IPv6. Setting this
 245      to true forces their use even on IPv4 connections. Note that most FTP servers
 246      do not support RFC2428.</para></listitem>
 247      </varlistentry>
 248
 249      <varlistentry><term>cdrom</term>
 250      <listitem><para>CDROM URIs; the only setting for CDROM URIs is the mount point,
 251      <literal>cdrom::Mount</literal> which must be the mount point for the CDROM drive
 252      as specified in <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>. It is possible to provide
 253      alternate mount and unmount commands if your mount point cannot be listed
 254      in the fstab (such as an SMB mount and old mount packages). The syntax
 255      is to put <literallayout>"/cdrom/"::Mount "foo";</literallayout> within
 256      the cdrom block. It is important to have the trailing slash. Unmount
 257      commands can be specified using UMount.</para></listitem>
 258      </varlistentry>
 259
 260      <varlistentry><term>gpgv</term>
 261      <listitem><para>GPGV URIs; the only option for GPGV URIs is the option to pass additional parameters to gpgv.
 262      <literal>gpgv::Options</literal> Additional options passed to gpgv.
 263      </para></listitem>
 264      </varlistentry>
 265
 266    </variablelist>
 267   </para>
 268  </refsect1>
 269
 270  <refsect1><title>Directories</title>
 271
 272    <para>The <literal>Dir::State</literal> section has directories that pertain to local
 273    state information. <literal>lists</literal> is the directory to place downloaded
 274    package lists in and <literal>status</literal> is the name of the dpkg status file.
 275    <literal>preferences</literal> is the name of the APT preferences file.
 276    <literal>Dir::State</literal> contains the default directory to prefix on all sub
 277    items if they do not start with <filename>/</filename> or <filename>./</filename>.</para>
 278
 279    <para><literal>Dir::Cache</literal> contains locations pertaining to local cache
 280    information, such as the two package caches <literal>srcpkgcache</literal> and
 281    <literal>pkgcache</literal> as well as the location to place downloaded archives,
 282    <literal>Dir::Cache::archives</literal>. Generation of caches can be turned off
 283    by setting their names to be blank. This will slow down startup but
 284    save disk space. It is probably preferred to turn off the pkgcache rather
 285    than the srcpkgcache. Like <literal>Dir::State</literal> the default
 286    directory is contained in <literal>Dir::Cache</literal></para>
 287
 288    <para><literal>Dir::Etc</literal> contains the location of configuration files,
 289    <literal>sourcelist</literal> gives the location of the sourcelist and
 290    <literal>main</literal> is the default configuration file (setting has no effect,
 291    unless it is done from the config file specified by
 292    <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar>).</para>
 293
 294    <para>The <literal>Dir::Parts</literal> setting reads in all the config fragments in
 295    lexical order from the directory specified. After this is done then the
 296    main config file is loaded.</para>
 297
 298    <para>Binary programs are pointed to by <literal>Dir::Bin</literal>. <literal>Dir::Bin::Methods</literal>
 299    specifies the location of the method handlers and <literal>gzip</literal>,
 300    <literal>dpkg</literal>, <literal>apt-get</literal> <literal>dpkg-source</literal>
 301    <literal>dpkg-buildpackage</literal> and <literal>apt-cache</literal> specify the location
 302    of the respective programs.</para>
 303
 304    <para>
 305      The configuration item <literal>RootDir</literal> has a special
 306      meaning.  If set, all paths in <literal>Dir::</literal> will be
 307      relative to <literal>RootDir</literal>, <emphasis>even paths that
 308      are specified absolutely</emphasis>.  So, for instance, if
 309      <literal>RootDir</literal> is set to
 310      <filename>/tmp/staging</filename> and
 311      <literal>Dir::State::status</literal> is set to
 312      <filename>/var/lib/dpkg/status</filename>, then the status file
 313      will be looked up in
 314      <filename>/tmp/staging/var/lib/dpkg/status</filename>.
 315    </para>
 316  </refsect1>
 317
 318  <refsect1><title>APT in DSelect</title>
 319    <para>
 320    When APT is used as a &dselect; method several configuration directives
 321    control the default behaviour. These are in the <literal>DSelect</literal> section.</para>
 322
 323    <variablelist>
 324      <varlistentry><term>Clean</term>
 325      <listitem><para>Cache Clean mode; this value may be one of always, prompt, auto,
 326      pre-auto and never.  always and prompt will remove all packages from
 327      the cache after upgrading, prompt (the default) does so conditionally.
 328      auto removes only those packages which are no longer downloadable
 329      (replaced with a new version for instance).  pre-auto performs this
 330      action before downloading new packages.</para></listitem>
 331      </varlistentry>
 332
 333      <varlistentry><term>options</term>
 334      <listitem><para>The contents of this variable is passed to &apt-get; as command line
 335      options when it is run for the install phase.</para></listitem>
 336      </varlistentry>
 337
 338      <varlistentry><term>Updateoptions</term>
 339      <listitem><para>The contents of this variable is passed to &apt-get; as command line
 340      options when it is run for the update phase.</para></listitem>
 341      </varlistentry>
 342
 343      <varlistentry><term>PromptAfterUpdate</term>
 344      <listitem><para>If true the [U]pdate operation in &dselect; will always prompt to continue.
 345      The default is to prompt only on error.</para></listitem>
 346      </varlistentry>
 347    </variablelist>
 348  </refsect1>
 349
 350  <refsect1><title>How APT calls dpkg</title>
 351    <para>Several configuration directives control how APT invokes &dpkg;. These are
 352    in the <literal>DPkg</literal> section.</para>
 353
 354    <variablelist>
 355      <varlistentry><term>options</term>
 356      <listitem><para>This is a list of options to pass to dpkg. The options must be specified
 357      using the list notation and each list item is passed as a single argument
 358      to &dpkg;.</para></listitem>
 359      </varlistentry>
 360
 361      <varlistentry><term>Pre-Invoke</term><term>Post-Invoke</term>
 362      <listitem><para>This is a list of shell commands to run before/after invoking &dpkg;.
 363      Like <literal>options</literal> this must be specified in list notation. The
 364      commands are invoked in order using <filename>/bin/sh</filename>, should any
 365      fail APT will abort.</para></listitem>
 366      </varlistentry>
 367
 368      <varlistentry><term>Pre-Install-Pkgs</term>
 369      <listitem><para>This is a list of shell commands to run before invoking dpkg. Like
 370      <literal>options</literal> this must be specified in list notation. The commands
 371      are invoked in order using <filename>/bin/sh</filename>, should any fail APT
 372      will abort. APT will pass to the commands on standard input the
 373      filenames of all .deb files it is going to install, one per line.</para>
 374
 375      <para>Version 2 of this protocol dumps more information, including the
 376      protocol version, the APT configuration space and the packages, files
 377      and versions being changed. Version 2 is enabled by setting
 378      <literal>DPkg::Tools::options::cmd::Version</literal> to 2. <literal>cmd</literal> is a
 379      command given to <literal>Pre-Install-Pkgs</literal>.</para></listitem>
 380      </varlistentry>
 381
 382      <varlistentry><term>Run-Directory</term>
 383      <listitem><para>APT chdirs to this directory before invoking dpkg, the default is
 384      <filename>/</filename>.</para></listitem>
 385      </varlistentry>
 386
 387      <varlistentry><term>Build-options</term>
 388      <listitem><para>These options are passed to &dpkg-buildpackage; when compiling packages,
 389      the default is to disable signing and produce all binaries.</para></listitem>
 390      </varlistentry>
 391    </variablelist>
 392  </refsect1>
 393
 394  <refsect1><title>Debug options</title>
 395    <para>Most of the options in the <literal>debug</literal> section are not interesting to
 396    the normal user, however <literal>Debug::pkgProblemResolver</literal> shows
 397    interesting output about the decisions dist-upgrade makes.
 398    <literal>Debug::NoLocking</literal> disables file locking so APT can do some
 399    operations as non-root and <literal>Debug::pkgDPkgPM</literal> will print out the
 400    command line for each dpkg invokation. <literal>Debug::IdentCdrom</literal> will
 401    disable the inclusion of statfs data in CDROM IDs.
 402    <literal>Debug::Acquire::gpgv</literal> Debugging of the gpgv method.
 403    </para>
 404  </refsect1>
 405
 406  <refsect1><title>Examples</title>
 407    <para>&configureindex; is a
 408    configuration file showing example values for all possible
 409    options.</para>
 410  </refsect1>
 411
 412  <refsect1><title>Files</title>
 413    <para><filename>/etc/apt/apt.conf</filename></para>
 414  </refsect1>
 415
 416  <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
 417    <para>&apt-cache;, &apt-config;<!-- ? reading apt.conf -->, &apt-preferences;.</para>
 418  </refsect1>
 419
 420  &manbugs;
 421
 422 </refentry>
 423