[plug] Problem with apt

[Brad Campbell]

G'day all..

heres a strange one.. most probably caused by all the different
.lib's I have installed on my system as a result of 2 years learning
about linux.. but anyway..

apt-get has stopped working..
I just get a 403 Forbidden - by rule
Error on every file it tries to download when I do an update..

I know my sources.list file is ok, coz I coppied it to another machine
and it worked ok..
It's basicly the default sources.list.. the one that points to 
http.us.debian.org

If I put a couple of local links in, to my local debian slink images
mounted over a loopback.. it works fine..
I just cant do an update over ftp or http..

Tried using dselect to purge the packages, then manually removed any
fragments left over, then re-installed from the slink images (apt 0.1.8)
but still no go..

Tried to upgrade to apt 0.3.* but of course the library dependencies were
not there..

I'm trying to upgrade my system to potato.. I used apt to upgrade from hamm
to slink with no problems.. but then that was from a local cd image as well.

My laptop has no problems with apt-get at all.. just this bloody desktop..
It's probably time for a re-format and clean install anyway. Due to my previous
lack of understanding about linux systems.. (this one has been hacked on for 3
years)
everything is installed as root, and there are more aborted library installs
with
fragments everywhere than working programs..

On another note.. is anyone having any success with Mozilla ?
Thats the reason I need to upgrade, as I'm getting undefined symbol errors from
libpthread.so.0
In fact, exactly the same error I was getting trying to run the new apt 0.3.x

Cheers..
Brad..