I just installed woody from a full set of cdrom's, and my /etc/apt/sources.list lists all my sources (the 7 CD's) as using "unstable".

Am I running Sid?

How can I tell whether or not I'm running stable or unstable?

Note, I've read that I can look in my /etc/apt/apt.conf for something that looks like:

|
| # Make 'stable' the default distribution
| APT::Default-Release "stable";
|

But I don't have an apt.conf file. Has that been removed as of Woody? If so, what's replaced it?

Oh pay no attention to that. It said the same thing for my sources.list entries when I installed woody from cdrom. If I remember correctly, there was a note on the Debian website basically saying that whoever created the iso images forgot to change the title of the cds from "unstable" to "stable". You should be fine as long as it's set up for files to be downloaded from the stable branch.

Thanks for the reply kly.

Looking at my sources.list (now that it's in front of me):

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-7 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-6 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-5 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-4 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-3 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-2 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r1 _Woody_ - Official powerpc Binary-1 (20030109)]/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main

it doesn't seem that 'unstable' is being listed as part of that long CD name, does it?

Anyhow, maybe things will make more sense once I set up sources.list for pulling current (stable) stuff off the net.

Any idea about the missing /etc/apt/apt.conf file? All I've got there (besides my sources.list) is an /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf file which contains only:

// Pre-configure all packages with debconf before they are installed.
// If you don't like it, comment it out.
DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true";};

I'm running SID:

$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf
cat: /etc/apt/apt.conf: No such file or directory

If it doesn't exist, create it, but it's not needed

Thanks Ice. I'll have to have a 2nd look at the apt.conf man page when I get home.

Hmm... I think I might also look into trying "dpkg-reconfigure apt".

A somewhat inaccurate, but quick and dirty way of checking what distribution you're running would be to cat /etc/debian_version.

Forgive me if this sounds silly , but why is cat /etc/debian_version
a "inaccurate" & "dirty" way to determine the current version?



Regards

AXO

servant@debian:/$ cat /etc/debian_version
3.0

That doesn't indicate the branch, does it?

As for /etc/apt/sources.list, if you set it up using the Apt How-To, it's pretty easy - at least for me.
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap...basico.en.html

To get unstable I just change the word stable in my sources.list to unstable.

See if that helps.

debian:/usr/share/man/man8# man apt.conf 5 will answer your question about the apt.conf file.

Hope this helps.

Chinaman,

3.0 == Woody == stable

So, no it doesn't tell you directly, but it does give you good hints

Well, first of all, you can modify /etc/debian_version to read "super-duper-latest-and-greatest" but that doesn't make it a Debian branch But also, a more genuine concern is that that really only indicates what version one of the packages is (base-(something), can't remember what), and doesn't tell the true story of your whole system. You CAN mix branches (though don't, unless you really know what you're doing), so you could conceivably have the unstable version of whatever package /etc/debian_version is in (I'm too lazy to run dpkg -S /etc/debian_version to find which package that is), and then every other package on your system could be from stable.

Strike thanks for clearing that up for me .

Regards
AXO