Re: Stretch stable and jessie testing - repositories listed
Jimmy Johnson:
> On 02/10/2017 05:49 PM, David Wright wrote:
>> On Fri 10 Feb 2017 at 16:00:13 (-0800), Jimmy Johnson wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> Take a look at Synaptic Menu you can select a package and then go to
>>> Package > Force Version, you can only force one package at a time
>>> but, yes you can downgrade. I can down grade a couple hundred
>>> packages without much problem, depends on the user.
>>
>> Oh, that's heartening! Does Synaptic use a different method
>> from dpkg? The man page for the latter says (and the warnings
>> look very pretty in red):
>> Warning: At present dpkg does not do any dependency checking on
>> downgrades and therefore will not warn you if the downgrade
>> breaks the dependency of some other package. This can have seri‐
>> ous side effects, downgrading essential system components can
>> even make your whole system unusable. Use with care.
>> Cheers,
>> David.
>
> Hi David, Synaptic will not let you install a broken package. If you
> are running sid/testing sometimes a package version will become obsolete
> and need a change or a video driver version is not working and needs a
> change, etc. If you're running in a GUI Synaptic is handy to have
> installed. And yes, it's using "dpkg".
One thing I have not been able to find in synaptic or elsewhere is a way
to keep track of what has been installed and when. If you know where
such a log habitates or can be created let me/us know.
I understand it all relates to what depends on what and who is breaking
whom. If it is a package that depends on other "stuff" but nothing
depends on it you can install something from debian1 in its beta version
and all else is fine. But if you go one version back of one little
thing that 100 things depend on, you may get 90 things not working.
This is my simplistic understanding. Out of my panic experimentation I
have run into situations that it becomes a great puzzle of why the
system is still working. Like creating a mess and breaking the system
then reinstalling an earlier version of the distribution ON TOP of the
mesh, same root and user names and passwords,
then try to locate all the things that had been installed and upgraded
that are not on the dpkg list and if not recovered they will remain
unupdated. And it works! Like magic! I think all synaptic does is
simplifying and remembering all the correct syntax of dpkg commands and
executing them for you.
--
"The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG
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