19

Chapter 5

The Debian FTP archives

5.1 What are all those directories at the Debian FTP archives?

The software that has been packaged for Debian GNU/Linux is available in one of several

directory trees on each Debian mirror site.

The

dists

directory is short for  distributions , and it is the canonical way to access the cur 

rently available Debian releases (and pre releases).

The

pool

directory contains the actual packages, see `What's in the

pool

directory?' on

page

24

.

There are the following supplementary directories:

/tools/: DOS utilities for creating boot disks, partitioning your disk drive, compress 

ing/decompressing files, and booting Linux.

/doc/: The basic Debian documentation, such as the FAQ, the bug reporting system instruc 

tions, etc.

/indices/: The Maintainers file and the override files.

/project/: mostly developer only materials, such as:

project/experimental/: This directory contains packages and tools which are still being

developed, and are still in the alpha testing stage. Users shouldn't be using pack 

ages from here, because they can be dangerous and harmful even for the most ex 

perienced people.

5.2 How many Debian distributions are there in the

dists

direc 

tory?

There are three distributions, the  stable  distribution, the  testing  distribution, and the  un 

stable  distribution. The  testing  distribution is sometimes `frozen' (see `What about  test