Package: apt Version: 0.5.27 Severity: normal
If you have packages pinned in /etc/apt/preferences, and those packages are not installed, then apt-cache will silently remove that package from its list of available packages (as in the 'apt-cache dumpavail' option), and apt-get install will declare that the package is not available. Yet frustratingly enough, 'apt-cache show' will display the package information and 'apt-get source' will work happily. I understand this is probably correct behavior, but in my case these entries were added to /etc/apt/preferences by apt-listbugs long ago, so it was entirely non-obvious as to why it was not working. Example from /etc/apt/preferences: Explanation: Pinned by apt-listbugs at Fri Jan 30 02:08:57 PST 2004 Package: wine Pin: version 0.0.20030813-2 Pin-Priority: 1000 -- Package-specific info: -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.4.26-1-686 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C Versions of packages apt depends on: ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-16 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libgcc1 1:3.4.1-5 GCC support library ii libstdc++5 1:3.3.4-7 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 -- no debconf information
