[NBLUG/talk] Using apt-get and unstable packages

[Lincoln Peters]

I've almost figured out how to transistion from RedHat to Debian, but
I'm having some problems with apt.  Specifically, I need to install a
few specific packages from the "unstable" tree (newer versions of GNOME,
Evolution, and KDE).

At the moment, my /etc/apt/sources.list file contains:

deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main
deb-src ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main


I tried adding the following two lines:

deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main

But when I did that and ran "apt-get update", I got the following
output:

Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/main Packages
Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/main Release
Get:1 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main Packages [2762kB]
Get:2 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main Release [82B]
Get:3 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main Sources [1100kB]
Get:4 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main Release [84B]
Hit ftp://ftp.us.debian.org stable/main Packages
Hit ftp://ftp.us.debian.org stable/main Release
Hit ftp://ftp.us.debian.org stable/main Sources
Hit ftp://ftp.us.debian.org stable/main Release
Fetched 3862kB in 37s (102kB/s)
Reading Package Lists... Error!
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room!
E: Error occured while processing kjots (NewVersion1)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/security.debian.org_dists_stable_updates_main_binary_i386_Packages
E: The package lists or status files could not be parsed or opened.

So what the heck does that error mean?  How do I fix it?

Lincoln Peters <sampln at sbcglobal.net>