E: The value 'testing' is invalid for APT::Default-Release as such a release is not available in the sources

[bachmeil]

I went through the Docker tutorial and am now trying to use rocker/rstudio. I got the above error while attempting to follow the steps on this page.

Host OS: Linux Mint 17
Docker container: rocker/rstudio
Commands:

docker pull rocker/rstudio
sudo docker run -d -p 8787:8787 -v ~/dockerdata:/home/rstudio/dockerdata rocker/rstudio
docker ps
docker exec -it fae0 bash
apt-get install libgsl0-dev

Error message:

E: The value 'testing' is invalid for APT::Default-Release as such a release is not available in the sources

Solution

This is something of an ugly error because Google does not help (at least it didn't help me). Eventually I thought to do

apt-get update

and it worked. It would be nice to add a sentence to the wiki in case someone else experiences this error.

[cboettig]

@bachmeil Thanks for the issue report. Yes, that error is more cryptic than it should be do to an issue we should resolve soon; however, note that in general with docker images you are expected to run apt-get update before installing -- most official images at least purge the packages lists to keep the image small anyway.

Anyone with a GitHub account should be able to edit the wiki, so feel free to do so -- often other users have a better sense of what is missing and where they would look for that information than we do!

Cheers,

[bachmeil]

Thanks. I didn't know that I could edit the wiki (though obviously that makes sense). I've added a brief note to that section.

[kuamit5516]

root@kalilinux:/home/user# sudo apt-get install aptitude
Reading package lists... Done
E: The value '“testing”' is invalid for APT::Default-Release as such a release is not available in the sources

[eddelbuettel]

I just answered this here, and I really do not think you need to post the exact same issue three times.

[ErikEngerd]

How would one fix the error without having to do an 'apt-get update'? Even though this works, it will break reproducibility since every time the same docker image is built, it can get different versions of packages.

[eddelbuettel]

If you plan to pull packages via apt you also need an updated index. Can't have one without the other.

[cboettig]

it can get different versions of packages.

How different depends on your apt sources. If reproducibility is your primary concern, you might want to consider using the rocker-versioned stack instead, which builds on debian stable releases. The r-base images build on debian:testing, which always has the most recent/latest versions of things like compilers, etc. We discuss this at more length in: https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2017-065

[ErikEngerd]

That is helpful, I will have a look at it. Thanks.