Re: Pinning (was Re: Error while upgrading from Wheezy to Stretch)

[Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 02:47:05PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Hijacking a thread here, but it reads like I might be reading an expert.
> 
> "Pinning" is an interesting subject Roberto, interesting because the info 
> on how to do it is generally skipped over, or only mentioned in passing, 
> with NO examples of how to do it in the man pages available.

For backports, the <https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/>
say:

  All backports are deactivated by default (i.e. the packages are pinned
  to 100 by using ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes in the Release files.

Beyond that, pinning is strongly discouraged in the IRC channel.  The
channel's bot says:

  Bugs are explained at
  https://web.archive.org/web/20121017070250/http://carlo17.home.xs4all.nl/howto/debian.html#errata

I don't know why the page was removed, forcing the archive retrieval.
But there you have it.

Usually a user's attempt to do pinning is one of the steps leading to
what we call a "frankendebian" system, which is completely broken and
unfixable.  Hence, the strong discouragement against using it.