Re: Downgrade libxi6 -- HowTo? (Bug 515734)
Klistvud <quotations@aliceadsl.fr> writes:
> Greetings, fellow Debianites!
>
> I've recently installed Debian 5.0.3 on my other machine and am
> experiencing bug
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=515734
> (keymaps messed up in X).
>
> Now, the suggestion is to downgrade the libxi6 library. I have several
> "noob" questions about that:
You will want to know the bad version for step 2. Use aptitude show
<package> to print information. Copy the version string, call it
<version>.
> 1. How do you go about "downgrading" a package in Debian -- especially
> if it's a fresh system that's never been "upgraded" in the first
> place?
With ftp over to your debian repository and download a past version. I
just did this on my sid boxen with xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common.
I just fetched the older testing versions. There is also
debian-snapshot which will give older versions. Use dpkg -i
<package...>.deb to install it. The dpkg command will warn you about
the downgrade.
There's probably some fancy way to do the above with aptitude.
> 2. Won't the Debian maintainers fix the issue in a future official
> update
> anyway? Wouldn't "downgrading" the package on my own accord potentially
> interfere with such official update?
This is the trick: forbid the offending version. Do
aptitude forbid-version <package>=<version>
This says you don't want *that* version, but that future updates are
acceptable.
> 3. How come there still hasn't been such an update? The bug is marked
> as "grave" and it probably wouldn't be hard for the maintainer(s) to
> force the reccommended downgrade of the libxi6 library in a regular
> update?
Sometimes bug fixes take longer than you'd like. It's a vollonteer
effort. The maintainer has to be available, find a solution and test
it, wait for build and then debian seems to release new filesets twice
daily.
That said, when a clearly broken version gets released, detected and
acknowledged, there could perhaps be some automated mechanism to revert
to previous.
> Forgive my noobness, but I still haven't quite grasped the Debian
> procedures and mechanisms. But I'm doing a lot of reading, so I hope
> I'll catch up in time. I already know how to open a terminal and type
> "ls".
>
> TIA
>
> --
> Certifiable Loonix User 481801
--
Johan KULLSTAM
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