Re: Installation of packages from backports, unstable and stable.

[Roman Khomasuridze <khomasuridze@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 8:12 AM, vishnu vardhan <vishnuvardhan.linux@gmail.com> wrote:

OS : Lenny 5.0.3

I have installed openoffice from backports and transmission-gtk from unstable.

I have read a couple of articles about installing packages from stable, unstable, etc.. and pinning of packages.

My sources.list entries are as follows :
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
#deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free
#deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib

After I have installed transmission-gtk, I commented out the line of unstable.
I did not created /etc/spt/preference file. I am still averse to pinning of packages.

Do I need to create a prefernce file ? and is it compulsory ?
Are there any more lines need to be added to sources.list file ?
If I did not create the preference file, and if I update the system [ apt-get update, apt-get upgrade ] will any issues crop up ?
If I pin my packages, what word should I use for backports. e.g. Pin: release a=testing.

Please guide me.

thank u,
vishnuvardhan.

you need to create preference file and pin packages there. also you need to add to sources.list all the repositories you want. fo e.g. you have stable, testing and unstable repos in my sources.list, and my preference file looks like this: 

Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 650

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 600
 
this means that "apt-get install transmission-gtk" willl install that package from stable repo, but if you want  some package from testing you should "apt-get install transmission-gtk/testing" or "apt-get install -t testing trasmission-gtk"

hope i was clear :d, sorry fo my english