Question about repositories and updates

[JoeS]

I'm not familiar with how Debian works. I have a few
questions about repositories:

What are volatile updates; who would need these?
Would they update packages installed from stable or some other
repo when I do updates?

I have a few repositories in sources.list:
Main, Backports, Multimedia, Wine
would I need to specify which repository to install a package from?
Would there be a default repo that aptitude installs from?

How do I navigate the various repositories with aptitude?

Thanks

[chris81]

What are volatile updates; who would need these?

Would they update packages installed from stable or some other
repo when I do updates?

So debian-volatile will only contain changes to stable programs that are necessary to keep them functional.

(from Debian -- The debian-volatile Project if you want to read more about).

I have a few repositories in sources.list:
Main, Backports, Multimedia, Wine
would I need to specify which repository to install a package from?
Would there be a default repo that aptitude installs from?

How do I navigate the various repositories with aptitude?

Thanks

For the latest part of your question, I hope you'll find answer at
APT HOWTO

chris81

[Daan]

I have a few repositories in sources.list:
Main, Backports, Multimedia, Wine
would I need to specify which repository to install a package from?
Would there be a default repo that aptitude installs from?

In general, aptitude installs the package with the highest version number if it finds several versions. I think this means that packages from Debian Multimedia get installed even though they are in Main too. But I think nothing from backports is installed unless you specify it to be so. Have a look at the Debian Backports webpage. I don't have the Wine repo, but I did have the others (and nothing else) and it worked just fine without special configuration.

[coopstah13]

typically you don't tell it which repo to use, you just pick the package to install and it looks in the repos you have enabled to install it or not

[JoeS]

Thanks for the info. It was helpful.

I also wanted to know if I could search through
a particular repository using aptitude. I think
aptitude mixes them together, but I would like
to look at what is in the various repositories
separately.

Thanks