Warning for intrepid users: a package shows in apt-cache search or apt-get install, but not in synaptic search?
Paul Johnson
pauljohn32 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 17 22:45:32 UTC 2008
Word to the wise:
Something's wrong in Synaptic Search and it can be frustrating to realize it.
Here's why I say that.
I have a clean install of Ubuntu 8.10 on a Lenovo T61 laptop. The
install was surprisingly smooth, most devices worked out of the box.
Even the fingerprint scanner was easy to set up, after installing some
debs.
I've noticed a weird mis-match between packages I can access through
apt-get and synaptic. After adding repositories and running apt-get
update, I can list and install things through apt-cache and apt-get,
but those same packages do not show in synaptic's search output.
Here's an example. I want to run the avant-window-navigator test
versions from launchpad. Here is the sources.list.d file I use:
sources.list.d$ cat awn-extras
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu intrepid main
In synaptic, I do not see the avant related packages from that test
trunk. But in output from apt-cache, I see
awn-extras-applets-trunk 0.3.1
avant-window-navigator-trunk 0.3.1
"apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk
awn-extras-applets-trunk" does succeed.
I've banged my head on this a lot, and then I noticed a quirk.
Nothing shows in the synaptic "quick search" output, but if you just
list all packages, the avant-window-navigator-trunk is there. So
realized this is not a synaptic problem, per se, rather it is a
synaptic search problem, and it turns out this is a known bug.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/288797
I have confirmed that this workaround does fix it: "sudo
update-apt-xapian-index".
Reading that bug report, I don't understand why this workaround helps,
and everybody seems to agree it should not be necessary.
pj
--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas
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