list.save and list.distUpgrade
Solution 1
I am not sure about sources.list.distUpgrade, but the sources.list.save file is a backup of the sources.list file. I know from personal experience (about 5 minutes ago) that the sources.list.save file is extremely important after attempting to add a repository. If software center stops working correctly (EX: closing right after starting) then you need to replace the current sources.list file with the sources.list.save file.
To do this, open a new terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and type the command
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list.save /etc/apt/sources.list
and then
sudo apt-get update
This should fix the corrupt sources.list as long as sources.list.save exists in the /etc/apt/ directory.
Simply put, sources.list.save is just a backup file.
Solution 2
I was concerned about whether these files are included in the repos used when updating etc packages. It seems they're not: From man sources.list
re. the sources.list.d
directory:
Filenames need to have either the extension
.list
or.sources
depending on the contained format.
it goes on to talk about ignoring files. In summary I take it to mean that only files with .list
or .sources
get used when updating packages etc. The meaning of the .save
and .distUpgrade
files is well explained in the existing answer from Strato1 and the comments there.
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cluelesscoder
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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cluelesscoder over 1 year
This is more of a curiosity question as I try to get a better understanding of apt and package management.
I'm seeing that in my
/etc/apt/
and/etc/apt/sources.list.d/
folders I have very or sometimes identical files which have the extension ofsources.list
,sources.list.distUpgrade
,sources.list.save
, and so on.What's the point of these duplicate or similar files?
sources.list
andsources.list.save
in/etc/apt/
seem to be identical butsources.list.distUpgrade
shows quantal instead of raring for most stuff (I probably first installed quantal).On the other hand, in the case of
google-talkplugin.list
andgoogle-talkplugin.listUpgrade
in/etc/apt/sources.list.d/
the content of the files seems to be completely identical.Didn't find much in Google searches. I reviewed the sources.list manpage but it didn't talk much about it.
Also noticed this article where a bug related to the extensions was noted for 10.10
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GregL83 about 7 years.distUpgrade is a backup of the source state prior to running a dist-upgrade since third party sources are commented out due to unknown compatibility with the newer distribution.
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wjandrea over 6 years@GregL83 Thanks! Could you add that as an answer?
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Videonauth over 6 years@wjandrea when I look at when this comment was made and that this user was inactive since April 2017 I heavily doubt that this will yield any result.
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yuranos almost 6 yearsAt what point is this .save backup file created and by which process? I noticed it is not always present.