Re: APT::Default-Release doesn't seem to affect upgrades
On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 12:25:06AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote:
> I have a testing system (with a few items built from unstable
> sources), and just added unstable to my apt sources.list. As
> recommended in the HOWTO, I put
> APT::Default-Release "testing";
> in apt.conf. I do not have an apt/preferences file.
>
> When I tried apt-get upgrade (or dist-upgrade) it wanted to upgrade a
> bunch of packages, all from unstable. I tried commenting out unstable
> from my sources.list, and apt-get upgrade becomes a no-op.
>
> I expected apt would not use unstable unless I explicitly told it to.
> What am I missing?
You've probably installed one (or more) package(s) with version(s) newer
than that available in testing but older than that available in
unstable. With a Default-Release of "testing" you've set the priority
for "testing" packages to 990, and all other releases that your system
knows about to 500. The problem is that installed versions that only
exist in /var/lib/dpkg/status get a priority of 100. This means that if
the installed version is newer than what is in testing and older than
what is in unstable, unstable is seen as a desirable upgrade. Now, when
you preform and "apt-get upgrade" it will pull the newer version of the
package from unstable _if_ there are new packages that are needed that
wouldn't be upgraded of their own accord.
> Many of the packages to be upgraded were from mozilla, which is
> something I did build from source. So I could sort of see this
> drawing from unstable, even if I don't understand why. But others are
> definitely not like that, e..g, gnome-pim, install-doc, openuniverse.
>
> As a side mystery,
> # apt-show-versions -a gnome-pin
Perhaps you mean "gnome-pim"?
To get a better idea of why a package is being upgraded from a specific
release take a look at the output of "apt-cache policy $package".
--
Jamin W. Collins
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo
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