Re: How to migrate from sid to stable?
On 13-06-17, Pétùr wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have a computer which does not need anymore to be running the unstable
> version. I would like to migrate it to stable at some point.
>
> If I backup the home and rsync it on a new installation of Debian
> stable, I will have problems with the downgrade of softwares settings.
>
> I am not in a hurry and could slowly migrate to stable. But I am not
> sure changing the repositories to stable and wait with no update during
> a while is a good idea.
>
> I could not think of a proper (and somehow automatic) way to do this. Is
> there one?
>
> Pétùr
>
Theoretically, if you put all your sources to stable and pin stable with
Pin-Priority of 1001 all your packages will be downgraded to stable
version. But it is not supported and you can expect some breakage while
doing it. As for new install, you can do dpkg --get-selections >
package.list, to backup your selection of packages and later restore it
with dpkg --set-selections < package.list, followed with apt-get
dselect-upgrade. There are also methods with aptitude and apt-mark to
backup list of packages, that can get you separated lists of auto
installed packages and manually installed packages.
As for backup of home, you can exclude things that you think might cause
problem on your new stable install. So, just backup important stuff like
your personal data and some config files that you know will work when
downgraded, live vimrc, muttrc and stuff. You probably want to exclude
various config files of desktop environments and stuff like that.
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