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