How to get &$@( apt-get to work!!!!!

[IsaacKuo]

I can't get apt-get to work! It never connects to ftp2.de.debian.org! Aaaaarrgggghhhhh!

Sound familiar? Here's the fix:

As superuser, edit /etc/apt/sources.list

Replace all instances of "ftp2" with "ftp"

It took me weeks to figure this out--Someone, please make this a sticky!

[mzilikazi]

I don't think this makes a good sticky as it is not the correct way to set up your sources.list. You should try apt-spy as it will benchmark mirrors for you and help you get working sources in your sources.list.

[fingers99]

Well, I'm not sure how to make it sticky anyway!

But editing your sources.list is a quick easy fix (but has been covered before here) while apt-spy is the "proper" (but rather time consuming) way of doing it.

There are advantages to both.

[mzilikazi]

while apt-spy is the "proper" (but rather time consuming) way of doing it.

Well apt-spy does have some options for that to. .

-e number
`early finish'. Stop benchmarking after number of servers have been
completed. Act as if all servers were benchmarked upon completion.

-t time
how long (approximately) in seconds to download for. By default time is 15 seconds.

[IsaacKuo]

Thanks for the tip...but the suggestion I gave will actually work. I tried it!

apt-spy is NOT in the Knoppix install. So, you could either fruitlessly type in "sudo apt-get install apt-spy", or you could edit the /etc/apt/sources.list the way I suggested.

I am aware that editing this file has been discussed here in the past, but have you actually done the search yourself? You end up with a ton of unhelpful search results with suggestions which won't work. Example listings of sources.list tend to include ftp2.de.debian.org--not surprising since that's what's in the Knoppix CD.

Anyway, I'm trying out apt-spy right now to see what it comes up with. I really do appreciate the tip--I just wish it were in the big apt-get "sticky" thread, which is where everyone would look first. Also, I wish it actually worked--simply saying "apt-spy" won't help the new Knoppix user.

[IsaacKuo]

Okay, I haven't had any luck so far using apt-spy. I'm going to experiment some more, but it seems that something it does is overwhelming my Linksys router. The internet connection gets flakier and flakier (on all of the computers) and after a very short time it goes out altogether. apt-spy gets almost nothing but "timeouts" when it tries to connect. At least I already have a working solution.