Re: Downgrading all packages to woody versions

[Josh Metzler <joshdeb@metzlers.org>]

On Tuesday, February 25, 2003 11:45 am, David Gaudine wrote:
> I use woody, and I have a few packages that came from an early
> version of sid.  For these packages, dselect always shows me that the
> installed version is the same as the available version.  For example, my
> openssl and libssl packages show as installed version and available
> version 0.9.6d-1.  (Woody has 0.9.6c-2, sid has 0.9.7a-1).  I do know how
> to downgrade individual packages, and have already downgraded these
> two.  However, how can I find and downgrade all other packages where the
> installed version has a higher version number than the one in woody but
> is actually older?
>
> Here's how the problem happened:  When potato was stable I wanted to use
> woody so I specified "unstable" in sources.list.  Then, when woody became
> stable, I changed sources.list to specify "stable".  The problem is, I
> made the change too late, so I picked up a some packages from sid.
>
> David

you could create an /etc/apt/preferences file with the following entry:

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
Pin-Priority: 1001

Then do an apt-get update and apt-get upgrade or dist-upgrade (or your usual 
update method).  This preferences file tells apt to give all packages of 
Debian origin (o=Debian) from the stable distribution (a=stable) a priority 
of 1001.  From my understanding, the default priority is 500, but a priority 
> 1000 is necessary to get apt to downgrade a package.

This should downgrade any remaining unstable packages to stable.

man apt_preferences for more info.

Josh