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APT.CONF(5)							   APT.CONF(5)



NAME
       apt.conf - Configuration file for APT

DESCRIPTION
       apt.conf is the main configuration file for the APT suite of tools, all
       tools make use of the configuration file and a common command line
       parser to provide a uniform environment. When an APT tool starts up it
       will read the configuration specified by the APT_CONFIG environment
       variable (if any) and then read the files in Dir::Etc::Parts then read
       the main configuration file specified by Dir::Etc::main then finally
       apply the command line options to override the configuration
       directives, possibly loading even more config files.

       The configuration file is organized in a tree with options organized
       into functional groups. option specification is given with a double
       colon notation, for instance APT::Get::Assume-Yes is an option within
       the APT tool group, for the Get tool. options do not inherit from their
       parent groups.

       Syntacticly the configuration language is modeled after what the ISC
       tools such as bind and dhcp use. Lines starting with // are treated as
       comments (ignored). Each line is of the form APT::Get::Assume-Yes
       "true"; The trailing semicolon is required and the quotes are optional.
       A new scope can be opened with curly braces, like:


	  APT {
	    Get {
	      Assume-Yes "true";
	      Fix-Broken "true";
	    };
	  };

       with newlines placed to make it more readable. Lists can be created by
       opening a scope and including a single word enclosed in quotes followed
       by a semicolon. Multiple entries can be included, each separated by a
       semicolon.


	  DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt";};

       In general the sample configuration file in
       /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf
       /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/configure-index.gz is a good guide for how
       it should look.

       Two specials are allowed, #include and #clear #include will include the
       given file, unless the filename ends in a slash, then the whole
       directory is included.  #clear is used to erase a list of names.

       All of the APT tools take a -o option which allows an arbitrary
       configuration directive to be specified on the command line. The syntax
       is a full option name (APT::Get::Assume-Yes for instance) followed by
       an equals sign then the new value of the option. Lists can be appended
       too by adding a trailing :: to the list name.

THE APT GROUP
       This group of options controls general APT behavior as well as holding
       the options for all of the tools.

       Architecture
	  System Architecture; sets the architecture to use when fetching
	  files and parsing package lists. The internal default is the
	  architecture apt was compiled for.

       Ignore-Hold
	  Ignore Held packages; This global option causes the problem resolver
	  to ignore held packages in its decision making.

       Clean-Installed
	  Defaults to on. When turned on the autoclean feature will remove any
	  packages which can no longer be downloaded from the cache. If turned
	  off then packages that are locally installed are also excluded from
	  cleaning - but note that APT provides no direct means to reinstall
	  them.

       Immediate-Configure
	  Disable Immediate Configuration; This dangerous option disables some
	  of APTs ordering code to cause it to make fewer dpkg calls. Doing
	  so may be necessary on some extremely slow single user systems but
	  is very dangerous and may cause package install scripts to fail or
	  worse. Use at your own risk.

       Force-LoopBreak
	  Never Enable this option unless you -really- know what you are
	  doing. It permits APT to temporarily remove an essential package to
	  break a Conflicts/Conflicts or Conflicts/Pre-Depend loop between two
	  essential packages. SUCH A LOOP SHOULD NEVER EXIST AND IS A GRAVE
	  BUG. This option will work if the essential packages are not tar,
	  gzip, libc, dpkg, bash or anything that those packages depend on.

       Cache-Limit
	  APT uses a fixed size memory mapped cache file to store the
	  available information. This sets the size of that cache (in
	  bytes).

       Build-Essential
	  Defines which package(s) are considered essential build
	  dependencies.

       Get
	  The Get subsection controls the apt-get(8) tool, please see its
	  documentation for more information about the options here.

       Cache
	  The Cache subsection controls the apt-cache(8) tool, please see its
	  documentation for more information about the options here.

       CDROM
	  The CDROM subsection controls the apt-cdrom(8) tool, please see its
	  documentation for more information about the options here.

THE ACQUIRE GROUP
       The Acquire group of options controls the download of packages and the
       URI handlers.

       Queue-Mode
	  Queuing mode; Queue-Mode can be one of host or access which
	  determines how APT parallelizes outgoing connections.  host means
	  that one connection per target host will be opened, access means
	  that one connection per URI type will be opened.

       Retries
	  Number of retries to perform. If this is non-zero APT will retry
	  failed files the given number of times.

       Source-Symlinks
	  Use symlinks for source archives. If set to true then source
	  archives will be symlinked when possible instead of copying. True is
	  the default.

       http
	  HTTP URIs; http::Proxy is the default http proxy to use. It is in
	  the standard form of http://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/. Per host
	  proxies can also be specified by using the form http::Proxy::
	  with the special keyword DIRECT meaning to use no proxies. The
	  http_proxy environment variable will override all settings.

	  Three settings are provided for cache control with HTTP/1.1
	  compliant proxy caches.  No-Cache tells the proxy to not use its
	  cached response under any circumstances, Max-Age is sent only for
	  index files and tells the cache to refresh its object if it is older
	  than the given number of seconds. Debian updates its index files
	  daily so the default is 1 day.  No-Store specifies that the cache
	  should never store this request, it is only set for archive files.
	  This may be useful to prevent polluting a proxy cache with very
	  large .deb files. Note: Squid 2.0.2 does not support any of these
	  options.

	  The option timeout sets the timeout timer used by the method, this
	  applies to all things including connection timeout and data timeout.

	  One setting is provided to control the pipeline depth in cases where
	  the remote server is not RFC conforming or buggy (such as Squid
	  2.0.2) Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth can be a value from 0 to 5
	  indicating how many outstanding requests APT should send. A value of
	  zero MUST be specified if the remote host does not properly linger
	  on TCP connections - otherwise data corruption will occur. Hosts
	  which require this are in violation of RFC 2068.

       ftp
	  FTP URIs; ftp::Proxy is the default proxy server to use. It is in
	  the standard form of ftp://[[user][:pass]@]host[:port]/ and is
	  overridden by the ftp_proxy environment variable. To use a ftp proxy
	  you will have to set the ftp::ProxyLogin script in the configuration
	  file. This entry specifies the commands to send to tell the proxy
	  server what to connect to. Please see
	  /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/configure-index.gz for an example of how
	  to do this. The subsitution variables available are $(PROXY_USER)
	  $(PROXY_PASS) $(SITE_USER) $(SITE_PASS) $(SITE) and $(SITE_PORT)
	  Each is taken from its respective URI component.

	  The option timeout sets the timeout timer used by the method, this
	  applies to all things including connection timeout and data timeout.

	  Several settings are provided to control passive mode. Generally it
	  is safe to leave passive mode on, it works in nearly every
	  environment. However some situations require that passive mode be
	  disabled and port mode ftp used instead. This can be done globally,
	  for connections that go through a proxy or for a specific host (See
	  the sample config file for examples).

	  It is possible to proxy FTP over HTTP by setting the ftp_proxy
	  environment variable to a http url - see the discussion of the http
	  method above for syntax. You cannot set this in the configuration
	  file and it is not recommended to use FTP over HTTP due to its low
	  efficiency.

	  The setting ForceExtended controls the use of RFC2428 EPSV and EPRT
	  commands. The defaut is false, which means these commands are only
	  used if the control connection is IPv6. Setting this to true forces
	  their use even on IPv4 connections. Note that most FTP servers do
	  not support RFC2428.

       cdrom
	  CDROM URIs; the only setting for CDROM URIs is the mount point,
	  cdrom::Mount which must be the mount point for the CDROM drive as
	  specified in /etc/fstab. It is possible to provide alternate mount
	  and unmount commands if your mount point cannot be listed in the
	  fstab (such as an SMB mount and old mount packages). The syntax is
	  to put

	     "/cdrom/"::Mount "foo";

	  within the cdrom block. It is important to have the trailing slash.
	  Unmount commands can be specified using UMount.

       gpgv
	  GPGV URIs; the only option for GPGV URIs is the option to pass
	  additional parameters to gpgv.  gpgv::Options Additional options
	  passed to gpgv.

DIRECTORIES
       The Dir::State section has directories that pertain to local state
       information.  lists is the directory to place downloaded package lists
       in and status is the name of the dpkg status file.  preferences is the
       name of the APT preferences file.  Dir::State contains the default
       directory to prefix on all sub items if they do not start with / or ./.

       Dir::Cache contains locations pertaining to local cache information,
       such as the two package caches srcpkgcache and pkgcache as well as the
       location to place downloaded archives, Dir::Cache::archives. Generation
       of caches can be turned off by setting their names to be blank. This
       will slow down startup but save disk space. It is probably prefered to
       turn off the pkgcache rather than the srcpkgcache. Like Dir::State the
       default directory is contained in Dir::Cache

       Dir::Etc contains the location of configuration files, sourcelist gives
       the location of the sourcelist and main is the default configuration
       file (setting has no effect, unless it is done from the config file
       specified by APT_CONFIG).

       The Dir::Parts setting reads in all the config fragments in lexical
       order from the directory specified. After this is done then the main
       config file is loaded.

       Binary programs are pointed to by Dir::Bin.  Dir::Bin::Methods
       specifies the location of the method handlers and gzip, dpkg, apt-get
       dpkg-source dpkg-buildpackage and apt-cache specify the location of the
       respective programs.

APT IN DSELECT
       When APT is used as a dselect(8) method several configuration
       directives control the default behaviour. These are in the DSelect
       section.

       Clean
	  Cache Clean mode; this value may be one of always, prompt, auto,
	  pre-auto and never. always and prompt will remove all packages from
	  the cache after upgrading, prompt (the default) does so
	  conditionally. auto removes only those packages which are no longer
	  downloadable (replaced with a new version for instance). pre-auto
	  performs this action before downloading new packages.

       options
	  The contents of this variable is passed to apt-get(8) as command
	  line options when it is run for the install phase.

       Updateoptions
	  The contents of this variable is passed to apt-get(8) as command
	  line options when it is run for the update phase.

       PromptAfterUpdate
	  If true the [U]pdate operation in dselect(8) will always prompt to
	  continue. The default is to prompt only on error.

HOW APT CALLS DPKG
       Several configuration directives control how APT invokes dpkg(8). These
       are in the DPkg section.

       options
	  This is a list of options to pass to dpkg. The options must be
	  specified using the list notation and each list item is passed as a
	  single argument to dpkg(8).

       Pre-Invoke, Post-Invoke
	  This is a list of shell commands to run before/after invoking
	  dpkg(8). Like options this must be specified in list notation. The
	  commands are invoked in order using /bin/sh, should any fail APT
	  will abort.

       Pre-Install-Pkgs
	  This is a list of shell commands to run before invoking dpkg. Like
	  options this must be specified in list notation. The commands are
	  invoked in order using /bin/sh, should any fail APT will abort. APT
	  will pass to the commands on standard input the filenames of all
	  .deb files it is going to install, one per line.

	  Version 2 of this protocol dumps more information, including the
	  protocol version, the APT configuration space and the packages,
	  files and versions being changed. Version 2 is enabled by setting
	  DPkg::Tools::options::cmd::Version to 2.  cmd is a command given to
	  Pre-Install-Pkgs.

       Run-Directory
	  APT chdirs to this directory before invoking dpkg, the default is /.

       Build-options
	  These options are passed to dpkg-buildpackage(1) when compiling
	  packages, the default is to disable signing and produce all
	  binaries.

DEBUG OPTIONS
       Most of the options in the debug section are not interesting to the
       normal user, however Debug::pkgProblemResolver shows interesting output
       about the decisions dist-upgrade makes.	Debug::NoLocking disables file
       locking so APT can do some operations as non-root and Debug::pkgDPkgPM
       will print out the command line for each dpkg invokation.
       Debug::IdentCdrom will disable the inclusion of statfs data in CDROM
       IDs.  Debug::Acquire::gpgv Debugging of the gpgv method.

EXAMPLES
       /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/configure-index.gz is a configuration file
       showing example values for all possible options.

FILES
       /etc/apt/apt.conf

SEE ALSO
       apt-cache(8), apt-config(8), apt_preferences(5).

BUGS
       [1]APT bug page. If you wish to report a bug in APT, please see
       /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.

AUTHORS
       Jason Gunthorpe
	  Author.

       APT team
	  Author.

REFERENCES
       1. APT bug page
	  http://bugs.debian.org/src:apt



Linux			       29 February 2004 		   APT.CONF(5)




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