Re: [Synaptic-devel] [BUG] Commented out "empty" preferences file triggers bug ?

[Panu Matilainen]

On Sun, 2003-05-04 at 03:47, Dag Wieers wrote:
> Ok, I've seem to have send this mail with a faulty subject (I copied a 
> former mail and forgot to change the subject). So here is it again. Sorry.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've found another problem after I had some experiments with pinning. 
> Although I don't have any active pins set (everything is commented out) 
> synaptic gives the following error on start-up and after that doesn't show 
> any packages:
> 
>       Invalid record in the preferences file, no Package header
>       could not open package priority file /etc/apt/rpmpriorities
> 
> My /etc/apt/preferences looked like this:
> 
>       #Explanation: Prioritize Red Hat updates
>       #Package: *
>       #Pin: release c=updates
>       #Pin-Priority: 1002
>       #
>       #Explanation: Prioritize Red Hat packages
>       #Package: *
>       #Pin: release c=os
>       #Pin-Priority: 1001
>       #
>       #Explanation: Prioritize FreshRPMS packages
>       #Package: *
>       #Pin: vendor "Freshrpms.net"
>       #Pin-Priority: +550
>       #
>       #Explanation: Prioritize Dag Wieers packages
>       #Package: *
>       #Pin: packager "Dag Wieers <address@hidden>"
>       #Pin-Priority: +500
> 
> Apt however doesn't have a problem with this preferences file.

Hmm.. actually apt does have a problem with it and the error you see on
synaptic startup is comping from libapt, not synaptic itself:
address@hidden root]# apt-cache policy
E: Invalid record in the preferences file, no Package header

If you have any contents in the file, even just comments, you need to
have one "Package: <something>" line in the preferences file, otherwise
apt + synaptic considers the file invalid. A bit odd, yes...

        - Panu -