problem apt-get'ing debian source packages

[Griffith Feeney]

At 08:10 PM 11/6/00 -1000, you wrote:
>well, i believe you need the right http or ftp references in
>sources.list to get sources, note of course sources list doesn't grab
>sources generally it grabs and install binary packages, so i'm not sure
>what you mean by source packages.
>
>at least i think of packages as being binary, but i grabbed this fwiw,
>
>
>source is something that you download with the apt-get in potato; add
>'deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free'
>to /etc/apt/sources.list; then update and use apt-get [-b] source
>package-name to download the .orig.tar.gz, the .diff, and the .dsc, and
>have them unpacked and patched.  Pretty cool. and oh, the -b flag
>compiles and creates the deb, or (Don't forget to install dpkg-dev!)
>
>good luck,
>
>mike in kona

Thanks, this helped (where did you find it?). The default sources.list file
contains this line (with 'stable' rather than 'potato', to get whatever the
current stable distributionis) and a similar one for non-US sources, both
commented out. I uncommented both and had the problem originally described.
Re-commenting the non-US sources line solved the problem. (Roadrunner was
crawling along too slowly to retrieve the archive, but that's another
matter ....) I'm still unclear on the /var/stat/apt/lists/... issue, but
its working.

>Griffith Feeney wrote:
>> 
>> I've used apt-get for installing binary packages for some time and it works
>> like a dream, but I'm having trouble getting it to install source packages.
>> I've uncommented the lines in /etc/apt/sources.list, but when I do, e.g.,
>> "apt-get source gcc" I get the message
>> 
>> "Could not open file
>>
/var/stat/apt/lists/non-us.debian.org_debian-non-US_lists_stable_non-US_sour
>> ce_Sources - open (2 No such file or directory)"
>> 
>> I've been through the documentation but remain unclear why I'm getting this
>> message or what to do about it. Any clues? Thanks!
>> 
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