Package: aptitude Version: 0.8.10-6 With plenty of disk space,
jidanni1@ps11007:/tmp$ df . Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on none 131072 2976 128096 3% /tmp our regular (non-root) user thinks "I'll use the power of aptitude to download a package and any other required packages!" jidanni1@ps11007:/tmp$ aptitude -o Debug::NoLocking=true -o Dir::Cache=/tmp --download-only install libbest-perl The following NEW packages will be installed: libbest-perl 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 15.0 kB of archives. After unpacking 65.5 kB will be used. Get: 1 http://mirror.newdream.net/ubuntu/ trusty/universe libbest-perl all 0.15-1 [15.0 kB] Fetched 15.0 kB in 0s (1,096 kB/s) "Hmmm, 15.0 kB, 65.5 kB, whatever. OK Good." jidanni1@ps11007:/tmp$ df . Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on none 131072 60280 70792 46% /tmp "Holy smokes, what happened? It ate half my disk space!" jidanni1@ps11007:/tmp$ ls -Sog|head -rw-r--r-- 1 29352344 01-19 21:19 pkgcache.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 29311314 01-19 21:19 srcpkgcache.bin "What do you want me to do, not set Dir?" jidanni1@ps11007:/tmp$ aptitude -o Debug::NoLocking=true --download-only install libbest-perl The following NEW packages will be installed: libbest-perl 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 15.0 kB of archives. After unpacking 65.5 kB will be used. Err http://mirror.newdream.net/ubuntu/ trusty/universe libbest-perl all 0.15-1 Could not open file /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/libbest-perl_0.15-1_all.deb - open (13: Permission denied) 0% [Working]E: Failed to fetch http://mirror.newdream.net/ubuntu/pool/universe/libb/libbest-perl/libbest-perl_0.15-1_all.deb: Could not open file /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/libbest-perl_0.15-1_all.deb - open (13: Permission denied) E: Some files failed to download "All I wanted was one measly package." "Now I have to clean up the mess left behind each time." (Same problem with current Debian aptitude.) Anyway do document on the man page, at --download-only, do document all the things non-root people need to do...