Re: apt pinning to blacklist a package

[Rob Owens <rowens@ptd.net>]

On Tue, Jul 07, 2009 at 09:12:39PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
> I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong...
> 
> I want to prevent a particular package from ever being installed.  In /etc/apt/preferences I have:
> 
> Package: somepackage
> Pin: version *
> Pin-Priority: -1
> 
> But the package can still be installed by either command:
> 
> apt-get install somepackage
> apt-get install otherpackage (where 'otherpackage' depends on
> 'somepackage')
> 
> I thought maybe the 'version *' was throwing it off, so I replaced '*' with
> the actual version number and the package still gets installed.
> 
> Any ideas how to achieve my goal of blacklisting this particular package?
> 
> -Rob
> 
Argh, moments after posting I came across a solution (I swear I've been googling for days).  It works like this:

Package: somepackage
Pin: release a=fakerepo
Pin-Priority: 1001

Since "fakerepo" is not a valid release, "somepackage" is never
installable.  I'm still not sure why my original scheme didn't work.

I got the solution from here:  http://discuss.itwire.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=13787&p=49182

-Rob