On 3/15/22, Dan Ritter <d...@randomstring.org> wrote: > Cousin Stanley wrote: >> Cousin Stanley wrote : >> > The data is already on your system, so >> > there's no transmission happening. >> >> I do not understand this. > ... > >> Does the Debian package manager >> really download package information >> for all ~59,000 avaiilabel packages >> in anticipation that users will need it >> at sometime in the future ? >> >> That would be suprising to me. > > Now you are surprised, and informed.
My linux-image-amd64 upgrade got mangled the other day so I was in "man apt-get" and apt-cache looking for ways to coerce success (beyond apt's recommended "dpkg --configure -a"). Found this and had intended to eventually post here anyway: apt-cache stats Thought it might prove of interest for others, too, with respect to seeing real numbers about the amazing volume of packages all interacting together under Debian's hood. Concerning this thread, the multi-megabyte sizes of the files under /var/lib/apt/lists reflect the package numbers found via "apt-cache stats". I can still remember my first ah-ha moment upon opening up one of those files and peeking in out of curiosity years ago.. Cindy :) -- Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA * runs with birdseed *