On Mon, Mar 09, 2026 at 23:52:52 -0400,
deference@null.net wrote:
Hello,
Recently, I went to dist-upgrade. I ended up damaging the system by
accident and decided to just do a fresh install. I saved the packages I
had downloaded for the upgrade and restored them into
/var/cache/apt/archives
How would I get apt to recognize that the packages are there? It doesn't
seem to notice them nor does aptitude.
The packages in that directory will be used if they exactly match the
names and versions that apt wants to download.
hobbit:~$ ls -l /var/cache/apt/archives/
total 20
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Feb 17 2024 lock
drwx------ 2 _apt root 4096 Mar 10 07:21 partial/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13172 Aug 7 2019 sl_5.02-1+b1_amd64.deb
hobbit:~$ sudo apt-get install sl jzip
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: [...]
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
Suggested packages:
zcode-game
The following NEW packages will be installed:
jzip sl
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 54.4 kB/67.6 kB of archives.
[...]
In this example, the sl package was already in the cache, so it didn't
need to be downloaded again, hence the 54.4 kB/67.6 kB.
If, however, a new version of sl had been uploaded since 5.02-1+b1
then the version in the cache would have been ignored.
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)