Package: apt Version: 0.5.4 Severity: normal The error message I get when I point Apt::Cache to a nonexistent directory is not very helpful.
In order to create a test case which is easy to repro without messing up your configuration, I use /tmp for Dir::State and create /tmp/lists and /tmp/lists/partial. (You'll notice that you get a sensible error for a missing .../partial both in the case of .../lists/partial and .../archives/partial.) $ mkdir -p /tmp/lists/partial $ apt-get -oDir::State="/tmp" -oDir::Cache::Archives="/no/such/dir" update E: Archive directory /no/such/dir/partial is missing. E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object E: Tried to dequeue a fetching object The error message is uninformative to anyone who is not familiar with the internal workings of apt-get. The large number of repeated messages is a bug in and of itself, anyway, and also actually drowned out the more-meaningful message about a missing .../partial directory -- if I had actually spotted that I would probably not have spent on the order of half an hour in Google to try to figure out what the dequeue error means. I really didn't notice the message about a missing directory until now. Tangentially, it would probably be useful if Apt could create any missing directories, say, if the immediate parent of a missing directory already exists. After all, these directories are probably only going to be used by Apt anyway. As you can probably tell, I'm running Woody here. I went over the BTS and the Debian changelog of the newest unstable version of Apt just to make sure this wasn't obviously fixed in a recent version. I'm afraid I don't have the time to set up a sandbox just in order to check. It would probably be useful if somebody who is already running the latest experimental release of Apt could try to repro this and follow up. /* era */ -- System Information Debian Release: 3.0 Kernel Version: Linux there.afraid.org 2.2.20 #1 SMP Thu Nov 7 16:15:53 EET 2002 i586 unknown Versions of the packages apt depends on: ii libc6 2.2.5-11.5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone ii libstdc++2.10- 2.95.4-11woody The GNU stdc++ library
