sources.list auto-configuration does not check for architecture availability

[Gregor Rosenauer]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I successfully installed Ubuntu 7.0.4 on my trusty old Powerbook G4 Titanium (500MHz, 1GB RAM).
However when searching for new packages to install, such as kubuntu-desktop, I did not find them.
When running "apt-get update", I got errors indicating that most of the repository's locations were invalid.

Looking at sources.list, I noticed that ubiquity had correctly configured the closest location, in my case Austria, but checking in a browser, I found out that on the mirror did not offer any PPC binaries at all (which is a shame btw).
After using the sources.list-generator at http://www.ubuntu-nl.org/source-o-matic/ and switching to Germany, all repositories were found and I could successfully install the desired packages.

Conclusio: ubiquity should check for availability of packages for the host architecture and not blindly configure the geographically closest mirror.

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

It sounds to me like ubiquity should have per-architecture mirror lists and then use the Launchpad mirror prober output to decide whether or not a mirror goes on to the list.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

apt-setup-verify already checks for whether the Release file exists. This suggests that the mirror is half-present but kind of broken.

Christian: I'm not exactly convinced by using the Launchpad mirror prober here. Static lists are no good (they change after release), and the Launchpad mirror prober is kind of heavyweight to query in every single installation. Why is just checking for the Release file not sufficient?