sources.list(5) - phpMan

SOURCES.LIST(5) SOURCES.LIST(5)

NAME
sources.list - Package resource list for APT

DESCRIPTION
The package resource list is used to locate archives of the package distribution system in
use on the system. At this time, this manual page documents only the packaging system used
by the Debian GNU/Linux system. This control file is located in /etc/apt/sources.list

The source list is designed to support any number of active sources and a variety of
source media. The file lists one source per line, with the most preferred source listed
first. The format of each line is: type uri args The first item, type determines the
format for args uri is a Universal Resource Identifier (URI), which is a superset of the
more specific and well-known Universal Resource Locator, or URL. The rest of the line can
be marked as a comment by using a #.

SOURCES.LIST.D
The /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory provides a way to add sources.list entries in
separate files. The format is the same as for the regular sources.list file. File names
need to end with .list and may only contain letters (a-z and A-Z), digits (0-9),
underscore (_), hyphen (-) and period (.) characters. Otherwise they will be silently
ignored.

THE DEB AND DEB-SRC TYPES
The deb type describes a typical two-level Debian archive, distribution/component.
Typically, distribution is generally one of stable unstable or testing while component is
one of main contrib non-free or non-us The deb-src type describes a debian distribution's
source code in the same form as the deb type. A deb-src line is required to fetch source
indexes.

The format for a sources.list entry using the deb and deb-src types are:

deb uri distribution [component1] [component2] [...]

The URI for the deb type must specify the base of the Debian distribution, from which APT
will find the information it needs. distribution can specify an exact path, in which case
the components must be omitted and distribution must end with a slash (/). This is useful
for when only a particular sub-section of the archive denoted by the URI is of interest.
If distribution does not specify an exact path, at least one component must be present.

distribution may also contain a variable, $(ARCH) which expands to the Debian architecture
(i386, m68k, powerpc, ...) used on the system. This permits architecture-independent
sources.list files to be used. In general this is only of interest when specifying an
exact path, APT will automatically generate a URI with the current architecture otherwise.

Since only one distribution can be specified per line it may be necessary to have multiple
lines for the same URI, if a subset of all available distributions or components at that
location is desired. APT will sort the URI list after it has generated a complete set
internally, and will collapse multiple references to the same Internet host, for instance,
into a single connection, so that it does not inefficiently establish an FTP connection,
close it, do something else, and then re-establish a connection to that same host. This
feature is useful for accessing busy FTP sites with limits on the number of simultaneous
anonymous users. APT also parallelizes connections to different hosts to more effectively
deal with sites with low bandwidth.

It is important to list sources in order of preference, with the most preferred source
listed first. Typically this will result in sorting by speed from fastest to slowest
(CD-ROM followed by hosts on a local network, followed by distant Internet hosts, for
example).

Some examples:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian dists/stable-updates/

URI SPECIFICATION
The currently recognized URI types are cdrom, file, http, ftp, copy, ssh, rsh.

file
The file scheme allows an arbitrary directory in the file system to be considered an
archive. This is useful for NFS mounts and local mirrors or archives.

cdrom
The cdrom scheme allows APT to use a local CDROM drive with media swapping. Use the
apt-cdrom(8) program to create cdrom entries in the source list.

http
The http scheme specifies an HTTP server for the archive. If an environment variable
http_proxy is set with the format http://server:port/, the proxy server specified in
http_proxy will be used. Users of authenticated HTTP/1.1 proxies may use a string of
the format http://user:pass@server:port/ Note that this is an insecure method of
authentication.

ftp
The ftp scheme specifies an FTP server for the archive. APT's FTP behavior is highly
configurable; for more information see the apt.conf(5) manual page. Please note that a
ftp proxy can be specified by using the ftp_proxy environment variable. It is possible
to specify a http proxy (http proxy servers often understand ftp urls) using this
method and ONLY this method. ftp proxies using http specified in the configuration
file will be ignored.

copy
The copy scheme is identical to the file scheme except that packages are copied into
the cache directory instead of used directly at their location. This is useful for
people using a zip disk to copy files around with APT.

rsh, ssh
The rsh/ssh method invokes rsh/ssh to connect to a remote host as a given user and
access the files. It is a good idea to do prior arrangements with RSA keys or rhosts.
Access to files on the remote uses standard find and dd commands to perform the file
transfers from the remote.

EXAMPLES
Uses the archive stored locally (or NFS mounted) at /home/jason/debian for stable/main,
stable/contrib, and stable/non-free.

deb file:/home/jason/debian stable main contrib non-free

As above, except this uses the unstable (development) distribution.

deb file:/home/jason/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Source line for the above

deb-src file:/home/jason/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Uses HTTP to access the archive at archive.debian.org, and uses only the hamm/main area.

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive hamm main

Uses FTP to access the archive at ftp.debian.org, under the debian directory, and uses
only the stable/contrib area.

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian stable contrib

Uses FTP to access the archive at ftp.debian.org, under the debian directory, and uses
only the unstable/contrib area. If this line appears as well as the one in the previous
example in sources.list. a single FTP session will be used for both resource lines.

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable contrib

Uses HTTP to access the archive at nonus.debian.org, under the debian-non-US directory.

deb http://nonus.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free

Uses HTTP to access the archive at nonus.debian.org, under the debian-non-US directory,
and uses only files found under unstable/binary-i386 on i386 machines,
unstable/binary-m68k on m68k, and so forth for other supported architectures. [Note this
example only illustrates how to use the substitution variable; non-us is no longer
structured like this]

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/binary-$(ARCH)/