On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 10:28:39PM +0200, aitor wrote:
> Hi Ralph,
>
> On 23/9/25 1:04, Ralph Ronnquist via Dng wrote:
>
> > You would notices that all the filenames of Devuan's *Packages files
> > have the DEVUAN or DEBIAN directory component.
>
> Yes. In the case of gnuinos, they have GNUINOS, DEVUAN or DEBIAN.
>
>
> > This is done to support web server re-write rules (in the package mirrors) to map the
> > filenames to either of the Devuan pool URLs or the Debian pool URLs.
>
> I understand. If you're using apache, I suppose that you'll have some .htaccess file
> containing something like this:
>
> |RewriteEngine on Redirect 302 /merged/pool/DEVUAN
> http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/pool||Redirect 302 /merged/pool/DEBIAN
> http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool or, if you're using nginx, ||some config
> file, e.g. |//etc/nginx/sites-available/default/|||: ||location / {
> autoindex on; rewrite /packages/merged/pool/DEVUAN/(.*)
> http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/pool/$1;||rewrite
> /packages/merged/pool/DEBIAN/(.*) http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/$1;||} |
>
> Here you are my .htaccess:
>

>     RewriteEngine on
>     Redirect 302 /merged/pool/DEVUAN http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/pool      
> Redirect 302 /merged/pool/main http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main
>     Redirect 302 /merged/pool/DEBIAN/main http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main
>     Redirect 302 /merged/pool/GNUINOS http://packages.gnuinos.org/gnuinos/pool
>     Redirect 302 /merged/pool/DEBIAN-SECURITY/updates/main http://security-cdn.debian.org/debian-security/pool/updates/main

>
>
> However, currently the first re-write rule is configured as follows:
>

>     Redirect 302 /merged/pool/DEVUAN http://deb.devuan.org/packages/devuan/pool

Hmm. I don't know apache2 but I see no reason in re-directing URLs of form
    http://deb.devuan.org/merged/pool/DEVUAN/something.deb
to become
     http://deb.devuan.org/packages/devuan/pool/something.deb
if that is what it's doing.

Firstly, the Filename attribute in the Packages file offers relative
names like:
    Filename: pool/DEVUAN/something.deb

That means that the apt request URL will have the initial form
    http://deb.devuan.org/pool/DEVUAN/something.deb
(it will have DEBIAN rather than DEVUAN for Debian packages)

The server is supposed to have a re-write rule for that URL form into
a local access url to offer the something.deb package from the local
service. It is supposed to only pass it back to the client for another
access if the request is for a DEBIAN package.

However, if it responds for another request for the client, then that
request URL should have the form
    http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/pool/something.deb
which is the documented form for Devian mirrors.

Note that the client (apt) might in theory resolve "deb.devuan.org"
differently for every of those accesses. It probably doesn't, but it
might. When you add "packages/" into it (due to the fitting your
service) then you may lead a client astray if they pick a different
mirror for that last URL access. In other words, that URL might work
on your service but it is not required to work on Devuan mirrors.

In short, that redirection (that includes "packages/") is wrong,
unless your apache2 for sure will process the re-written URL without
involving the client and your service services it under that
re-written access form. It's a wrong access URL to pass to a client
(apt) to use for a subsequent request to the mirror collective.

Ralph.

>
> I suppose that, with this change, packages.gnuinos.org is working for the rest of the users as well. But this is a guess.
>
>
> It's worth to clarify that this is done in the server side to support the package mirrors re-write rules, as you have pointed out above.
> But when I run the amprolla scripts to merge the repo (in local, because I haven't a dedicated server), then I tend to point to
> pkgmaster.devuan.org because is troubling me less than deb.devuan.org when it comes to download all the stuff.
>
> > You should also keep in mind that deb.devuan.org resolves to a number
> > of different servers for URL rewriting and it does happen that on
> > occasion some server might feature misconfiguration.
>
> Indeed, it rarely happens :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Aitor.
>

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