Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Day Brown wrote:

> which is really buggy. Apt-get is really nice, but it wont getcha with
> the debian servers down.
>
Not all the Debian servers are down, Day.  From what you said earlier, you
were having trouble accessing Debian's web page (www.debian.org).  I have
not had problems accessing it, but even if I had, that would not be
material to whether I could access any of the main apt repositories or any
of the hundreds of mirrors of those repositories.  The apt repositories
are not webpages.  They are online storage sites.  They are typcially
accessed via ftp, but can often be accessed by http as well, if someone
wants.  Anyway, only some of the central Debian servers were affected by
the recent hack: none of the mirrors or apt repositories were compromised,
and they continue to operate normally.  I had absolutely no problems
accessing any of the apt repositories listed in my sources.list file (and
the main US apt mirror is included there).  I think the problem(s) you are
having is/are probably related to your misunderstanding of how all these
things work.  For example: if you have a sources.list file, maybe it
points to a Corel apt repository.  Well, Corel is no longer in business,
so I'd expect whatever apt repositories they may have had to be offline
(probably permanently).  If you'd care to ask me or any other Debian user
to help you understand better, I predict that the problem you're
referencing could be resolved quite trivially.  And just as a final FYI,
on a Debian list I monitor there has just recently been discussion
prompted by some Corel user about how they could upgrade/update to a newer
Debian.  The consensus seems to be that this is perfectly possible to do
via apt-get (caveat:  don't try this if you have a fairly full Corel
installation unless you have broadband.  It could tie up your phone line
for a couple of days or more, if you try to use dialin).

James