Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

Well, Thomas, while I cannot answer your specific question, I can say I did try
that modernize, but didn't like it. Wish Debian would stop nagging about it. Also, on my Debian laptop I saw a mention of deb.multimeda.org is not signed. I
am also in Sid, but with a 6.19.10 Zabbly.
Chime

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

today i updated my headless Sid VM and saw new messages like

Err:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable/main Sources.diff/Index
Couldn't find the start of the patch series

Should i worry ?
(Should i activate the backup of the virtual disk and try again ?)

no, first i would try another run of update and if that still
gave errors i would clean out the apt lists and redownload them
all.
...

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

you too! :)


songbird

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On Sun 29 Mar 2026 at 18:58:56 (+0200), Thomas Schmitt wrote:

today i updated my headless Sid VM and saw new messages like

Err:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable/main Sources.diff/Index
Couldn't find the start of the patch series

Should i worry ?
(Should i activate the backup of the virtual disk and try again ?)

The last update was in september 2025. Its recorded log does not
contain "Err" messages.
In contrast to that update in 2025, some final lines after
Reading package lists... Done
were missing today:
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
873 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

When I update (not upgrade), "Reading package lists... Done"
is the final line I expect to see.

Sometimes the network might be a bit 'lumpy', and parts/all of the
download may fail, which can give messages like:
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
If there are any problems like that, I just repeat.
If I've been editing sources.list, or have any other worries,
I just delete all the lists, and update downloads a fresh set.
I'm then happy they're correct, and quit worrying.

The lines:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
come from (dist-)upgrade, and are typically followed by lines such as:
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
<the list>
<n> upgraded, <n> newly installed, <n> to remove and <n> not upgraded.

Yours may differ in detail because of the sheer number of packages
involved; IDK.

A new last line appeared instead:
N: Some sources can be modernized. Run 'apt modernize-sources' to do so.

I found it easy enough to convert my sources.list to debian.sources
just by looking at the example in trixie's Release Notes, ?4.3.1. I
tested with trixie, bookworm, bullseye, and even buster, which I think contradicts whatever I read before I wrote the last paragraph of https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2025/12/msg00481.html
probably the wiki. (With buster it's necessary to write
archive.debian.org in place of deb.debian.org, and the odd slash
in place of a hyphen.)

Be aware of the .gpg?.pgp filename change, though this should be
mitigated by new symlinks in /usr/share/keyrings/.

The subsequent dist-upgrade lasted long enough to indicate that
"update" brought info about lots of upgradable packages.

Command and full list of update messages: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# apt-get update
Get:1 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable InRelease [187 kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable/main Sources.diff/Index [63.6 kB]
Err:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable/main Sources.diff/Index
Couldn't find the start of the patch series

[ ? ]

Get:14 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable/main all Contents (deb) [42.2 MB]
Fetched 103 MB in 19s (5,469 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
N: Some sources can be modernized. Run 'apt modernize-sources' to do so.

----------------------------------------------------------------------- Active lines in sources.list :

$ grep '^[^#]' /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable main

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cheers,
David.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 23:27:19 -0500, David Wright wrote:

On Sun 29 Mar 2026 at 18:58:56 (+0200), Thomas Schmitt wrote:

The last update was in september 2025. Its recorded log does not
contain "Err" messages.
In contrast to that update in 2025, some final lines after
Reading package lists... Done
were missing today:
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
873 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

When I update (not upgrade), "Reading package lists... Done"
is the final line I expect to see.

I believe this is because you're using 'apt-get update' while Thomas
is using 'apt update'.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On 2026-03-29 at 12:58, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

today i updated my headless Sid VM and saw new messages like

Err:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable/main Sources.diff/Index
Couldn't find the start of the patch series

I have *no* expert or inside information on this, but my reflex on
seeing that message (especially if, as is indicated by other replies
here, other people aren't getting this error) is to think that this
reflects a problem with the current state on the specific mirror you
were connecting to at the time of the update attempt.
Assuming the error is still showing up for you with that mirror, it
might be interesting to see whether or not it also happens with a
completely different mirror (probably in a completely different part of
the world), one that's known - from posts by others - to not be
manifesting the issue for others.
Whether or not switching mirrors causes the errors to go away would
influence the consideration of whether to report the problem, and if so,
what place would be best to send the report.
--
The Wanderer
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On 2026-03-30, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:

Eduard Bloch wrote:

I would report it. This may be not a real bug but the message should
contain a better explanation of the original cause.

I have now put it on my todo list. (It might last until i get the
problem with firefox-esr and the Debian mailing list archive solved.)

https://bugs-devel.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1107144

Looks like it's already been reported.

I got a brief, weird, but postive message navigating that page; it said something like "Approved" with a green check mark.

I guess your checkmark with firefox-esr is red or something.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 13:44:05 -0000, CGS wrote:

https://bugs-devel.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1107144

Looks like it's already been reported.

I got a brief, weird, but postive message navigating that page; it said something like "Approved" with a green check mark.

I guess your checkmark with firefox-esr is red or something.

It's a green checkmark in both Firefox ESR and Brave, for me.

It may seem "weird" to you right now, but you will get used to it
pretty quickly. In this age of humankind, we are doing battle against
AI scraping bots that effectively perform a denial of service attack
against web sites with any kind of dynamic content. That green check
mark you see on this page is part of some kind of mitigation that
verifies you are not an AI scraper bot.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On Mon 30 Mar 2026 at 07:10:07 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 23:27:19 -0500, David Wright wrote:

On Sun 29 Mar 2026 at 18:58:56 (+0200), Thomas Schmitt wrote:

The last update was in september 2025. Its recorded log does not
contain "Err" messages.
In contrast to that update in 2025, some final lines after
Reading package lists... Done
were missing today:
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
873 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see th

em.

When I update (not upgrade), "Reading package lists... Done"
is the final line I expect to see.

I believe this is because you're using 'apt-get update' while Thomas
is using 'apt update'.

Well, I must admit it crossed my mind that the OP might have
accidently typed the "wrong" command. I've sometimes typed apt ?
and then "corrected" it to apt-get ?, usually because I've been
typing some of the extra commands that apt-get doesn't have, like:
# apt list --upgradable
# apt-get list --upgradable
E: Command line option --upgradable is not understood in combination with
the other options
100 #

But I discounted this because apt-get was in the Subject line:

$ grep -i apt /tmp/replied-to
Subject: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"
/1nEqO2adQYoyE+cWdgKzb/lVJLiZ+HXYR1RJf38rXA2o6apt5XA6HoN7KtUpON2nVCIbLlEi
873 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
N: Some sources can be modernized. Run 'apt modernize-sources' to do so.
# apt-get update
N: Some sources can be modernized. Run 'apt modernize-sources' to do so.
$ grep '^[^#]' /etc/apt/sources.list
$

From the full log, you can see that the list files appear to be
downloaded in full after the fuss has died down, but I can't
see the point in trying to save one or two hundred MB by not
running a clean update afterwards, especially as this happened
after a six-month interval.

Cheers,
David.

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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On Mon 30 Mar 2026 at 09:22:10 (+0200), Thomas Schmitt wrote:

i repeated "apt-get update" without getting error messages.
The subsequent "apt-get dist-upgrade" was quite sparse. So i think
the previous one was complete despite the "Err:" messages.

I wrote:

In contrast to that update in 2025, some final lines after
Reading package lists... Done
were missing today:
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
873 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

David Wright wrote:

When I update (not upgrade), "Reading package lists... Done"
is the final line I expect to see.
[...]
The lines:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
come from (dist-)upgrade,

Older upgrade logs reveil that in the past, both commands "update" and "dist-upgrade" reported the three lines which are now missing in
"update". So i think that this double work is avoided now.

I think you are mistaken, unless there's an APT switch that causes
apt-get update to do some further processing. I don't have any old
copies logging the console output from apt-get, only /var/log/apt/,
which doesn't concern itself with the lists.

Understandably, not many people post uneventful runs complete with
commandline and prompts, but here are a couple:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/09/msg00938.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2004/10/msg01358.html

OTOH, these /claim/ to be using apt-get:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Kubuntu/comments/1oe5uqo/i_just_saw_this_notice_message_in_konsole_when/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZFPmUqRA4

Cheers,
David.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
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Subject: Re: Sid apt-get update : "Err: Couldn't find the start of the patch series"

On Mon 30 Mar 2026 at 15:55:16 (-0500), David Wright wrote:

On Mon 30 Mar 2026 at 09:22:10 (+0200), Thomas Schmitt wrote:

i repeated "apt-get update" without getting error messages.
The subsequent "apt-get dist-upgrade" was quite sparse. So i think
the previous one was complete despite the "Err:" messages.

I wrote:

In contrast to that update in 2025, some final lines after
Reading package lists... Done
were missing today:
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
873 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

David Wright wrote:

I think you are mistaken, unless there's an APT switch that causes
apt-get update to do some further processing. I don't have any old
copies logging the console output from apt-get, only /var/log/apt/,
which doesn't concern itself with the lists.

Ah, good memory: I see that
'apt-get update' no longer does 'Building Dependency Tree'
was added to Apt's changelog in 2003 (woodyðstable).

Cheers,
David.

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