update-notifier deletes files in /var/lib/apt/lists/ ?

[Peter Garrett]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 18:55:24 +0000
Ewan Mac Mahon <ewan at macmahon.me.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 05:12:06PM +0100, Markus Kolb wrote:
> > Dennis Kaarsemaker wrote:
> > > On wo, 2006-03-08 at 13:17 +0100, Markus Kolb wrote:
> > >> Is there a way that the files won't be deleted?
> > > 
> > > THis is fixed in Dapper.
> > 
> > How? Fixed in package update-notifier? Do you have a bug id?
> >
> It's not actually update-notifier, it's the  underlying apt system. The
> bug is in malone at:
> <https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/23965>
>  
> It strikes me that this would be worth fixing in Breezy too, but I've
> never entirely understood the Ubuntu policy on updates to stable distros
> - it seems unusually strict.

I found that disabling automatic updates in the Synaptic package manager
stopped this annoying behaviour in breezy. I don't fully understand why -
but my experience before disabling automatic list updates was that this
problem showed up each morning, perhaps after cron daily ran. It seems to
have been a problem that apt was having recognising the fact that the
machine was not connected to the internet.

In Synaptic under "Settings - Repositories -Settings" I unchecked/ unticked
"Automatically check for software updates " . Of course this disables the
update notifier - it only pops up when an "apt-get update" is run, if
there are new upgrades. 

I found this preferable to backing up the list and replacing it every
morning! (I'm on dialup and got sick of having to run a complete update
every day, as it started from scratch each time) In any case , I was used
to running my own apt-get updates from my previous Debian experience...

Peter