[NBLUG/talk] Gaim weirdness with AOL

[Troy Arnold]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 04:51:25PM -0700, Nat W. wrote:
> I tend to see a similar problem, but I can sometimes not see p[eople who are
> on yahoo. If you look through your manual for apt-get, you can configure it
> so that you get gaim from unstable, which is usually the newest version.
> 
> (I'd provide the actual code, but my laptop is battery less at the moment.)

Without delving into pinning and all that, just:
1) add sources for unstable to /etc/apt/sources.lst
2) Create an /etc/apt/apt.conf like so:

APT::Default-Release "testing";

3) aptitude install gaim -t unstable

Note that while often you can pull packages in from unstable, sometimes
unstable is undergoing a transition and doing so would pull in lots and
lots of other dependencies (and worse, remove others) that you probably
don't want on an everyday system.  Right now is one of those times.

Another option is to go to http://packages.debian.org/gaim and download
and dpkg -i the .deb .  Apt is really cool about not letting you hose
your system in this way -- if the package conflicts it won't install.

Last, if you're a sonic.net customer, our own infamous augie maintains
their mirrors:
deb ftp://ftp.sonic.net/mirrors/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib

if you're not a sonic.net customer, this mirror has a big, fat,
screaming pipe:

deb http://linux.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib


-troy