[answered] Using multiple repositories

[johnmart]

My PASS account recently expired & while I was getting reconnected I switched to a repo located in my country. But this was an incomplete repo with a section missing. (can't say it here)

I edited the sections of another repo to include only the section I wanted to access. I figured that was how the megagames section worked & mimiced that. With both repos I ran it & it seemed to be ok. I didn't apply updates, as I was afraid to mess up my install. Would it have been ok? Would this be a safe solution for me?

Thanks
John

[muungwana]

All repositories contain the same packages and as far as i know, the recommendation for using only one repository is to not make synaptic confused when it processes packages from one repository and then process the same packages from another repository when the two repositories do not have the same packages due to differences in sync time.

I think you will be ok if you use more than repository if you make sure they do not both contain same sections.

This is a bit risky for management purposes though, this set up is not standard and you are supposed to know at all time about this change and what if you forget? You may come back in a couple of months with repository problems and you may fail to mention this setup and people will not be able to reproduce your problem and you may end up unfairly blaming packagers and maintainers of packages.

This is the main reason why we do not generally want people to have settings that are different from the rest of us.

[Archie]

This setup is certainly out of the ordinary. The whole idea of enabling just one repository is to make sure that the package list are consistent with the different sections that hold the packages. muungwana has a strong point and in addition to what was already mentioned, the two repositories might not be synced at the time you might be downloading updates, hence there will be dependencies issues and broken packages. Packages in one repository might pull in dependencies from the other repository only to discover that these dependencies were not the correct ones.

In good reasons, two repositories that are not setup with the same sections enabled should be used only in special circumstances. In doing so, you are doing it at your own risk.

It should work but you are taking an unnecessary risk.

[johnmart]

muungwana, Archie, thanks for your replies. Sorry, my post wasn't very clear. I understand the reasons not to enable more than one repo.
My local repo has all the regular sections. I wanted to enable a special section not suplied in repo1. So the sections are not duplicated. The second repo entry is for a special, optional section.

Thanks for your info.
John

[Rudge]

muungwana, thanks for your reply. Sorry, my post wasn't very clear. My local repo has all the regular sections. I wanted to enable a special section.

Thanks

All the repos are the same. What "special section" are you referring to?

[johnmart]

Hi Rudge,
I always assumed all repos have the same content too. But I recently found that all the repos have the necessary sections to keep an updated system. But some repositories have special sections.

[Texstar]

The only sections you should have enabled are :

main updates nonfree kde4 games

If you have a separate partition and are helping us test packages and are a member of the testers mailing list then you can add testing to the section area. Testing is only discussed on the testers mailing list. You need to be experienced in manual package installation and removal.

There is one section called special and contains a few things we don't want in the normal repositories. This section is not enabled by default. This section is for those special needs users such as those who want wine unstable or freetype2 with bytecode enabled or minitube that doesn't work with kde4 phonon-xine backend. Normally one enables this section installs what they need then disables it as to not pull in other things they do not want installed.

There is a separate repository for megagames.

Sometimes I create a temporary sections where I put packages I want to test upgrading over old packages to make sure they update clean and work as intended.

You should use only one repository at a time in addition to the megagames repo. Having multiple repositories checked only slows down Synaptic and can cause installation problems.

Tex

[johnmart]

muungwana, Archie & Rudge, I sent you pm's. ---Tex too.
Thanks

[Archie]

There is one section called special and contains a few things we don't want in the normal repositories. This section is not enabled by default. This section is for those special needs users such as those who want wine unstable or freetype2 with bytecode enabled or minitube that doesn't work with kde4 phonon-xine backend.

Edit: Nothing to see here, please go away ... you STILL just gotta love Tex for that!  

[menotu]

Yeah, like Hot Babe... you just gotta love Tex for that!   

You understand Archie your gonna start a download stampede now   

[Texstar]

There is one section called special and contains a few things we don't want in the normal repositories. This section is not enabled by default. This section is for those special needs users such as those who want wine unstable or freetype2 with bytecode enabled or minitube that doesn't work with kde4 phonon-xine backend.

Yeah, like Hot Babe... you just gotta love Tex for that! 

Why you gotta go and tell everything you know? 

[arkanabar]

Aha!  So THAT'S where you keep Wine1.5!!  This may free me from Canonical Critters forever!!!!!