Debian – Why can’t APT find package

aptdebian

I have a new install of Debian 8 ("Jessie") and want to install the firewalld package, but APT can't find it. This may be related to the fact that I didn't specify a mirror during installation, but as far as I can tell, I've made the appropriate configurations.

firewalld is located on the mirror here:

http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/firewalld/

That mirror is in my /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib

I've updated the available packages:

# apt update

APT still can't find it:

# apt search firewalld
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done

Why can't it find the package?

Best Answer

You need to have the full Jessie repository in your sources.list; you should have at least

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie-updates main
deb http://security.debian.org jessie/updates main

(you can add contrib if you want, and the corresponding deb-src lines if you want to be able to download source code for the packages too).

Check your sources.list contains at least those three lines, then run

apt update
apt install firewalld

The jessie-updates repository only contains updates to Jessie, it doesn’t contain the packages which were part of the original Jessie release and haven't been updated since. See What is the difference between the "jessie" and "jessie-updates" distributions in /etc/apt/sources.list? for more information.

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About your requirements, Iceweasel is the supported Firefox derivative (fork), I'm currently running debian as my desktop OS at work and use iceweasel every day, no problem. Gnome3, I think it'll be available on the next stable release, BTW what release are you running? Squeeze? If so I think (IIRC) Wheezy will have it. And finally, about graphics performance/quality, that depends a lot on your graphics card and its driver, but if you think of it like having transparencies, windows closing with fancy effects and so on, you'll need a moderm desktop or compiz (work with gnome2) which I think its available on stable (wheeze).

I have modified a bit your sources.list for wheeze, do you mind to test it and report back?

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze contrib non-free main
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/updates main

# squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main non-free contrib

# 3rd party repositories
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free

If you happen to be using wheezy or sid you'll have to change all squeeze ocurrences for the one you're using.

Please, backup your sources.list before replacing it, then test it as follows:

Refresh caches

# apt-get update

Search package

# apt-cache vlc

Install package

# apt-get install <package_name>

If find trouble, please report back with output for those three commands, or at least for the first and last.

Also, if you are already using Wheezy or sid, forget what I said about Gnome3 not being available, it should be there but wheezy is yet to be release and sid is always the development branch.

Apt-get install fails with error “Unable to locate package”

Looks like you just haven't updated your package lists, this is missing from the link that you gave -

sudo apt-get update

This should download the list files from the repos in /etc/apt/sources.list so that apt-get install knows what packages to look for.

Note also that you should do this regularly as the repository will change over time. In particularly do it before installing software if it hasn't been done for a while!

Best Answer

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Apt-get install fails with error “Unable to locate package”

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