Howto: Set up and Maintain a Mixed Testing/Unstable System

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hkoster1 · #61 Post by **hkoster1** » 2008-02-22 21:17

Thanks, that gives me some idea. I wouldn't want to revert to testing unless something got really messed up in Sid, something that I've been able to avoid on my AMD64 desktop so far, mainly because I check very carefully what all an "aptitude full-upgrade" wants to add/remove.

However, I wasn't that lucky with 32-bit Sid on my MacBook a couple of months ago, so reverting to Lenny might have been an option if I had thought of it. In the event, faced with reinstalling Sid (I thought), I decided to first upgrade the HD on the MacBook to a Samsung 160GB, then found that this SATA HD is precisely the one that neither the Etch, Lenny, Knoppix, or Gutsy installers will recognize... the only distro that could be installed was an early Alpha version of Hardy... OK, I'm rambling here like Eck, what I wanted to say is that this thread should be stickied, so that it more easily catches the eye of people like myself...

roadnottaken · #62 Post by **roadnottaken** » 2008-02-25 04:10

There is a way to instantly downgrade everything to lenny. In your favorite text editor, edit /etc/apt/preferences to include the following lines:

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Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 1001

Then, when you run aptitude safe-upgrade, every package on your system will be downgraded to the version in lenny. You can then remove the etc/apt/preferences file.

rickh · #63 Post by **rickh** » 2008-02-25 04:52

There is a way to instantly downgrade everything to lenny...

That should work, and I may be overly cautious, but I hesitate to ask aptitude to reconfigure the dependencies for multiple packages that may be interrelated on the fly for a downgrade.

Both apt-get and aptitude are designed for upgrades, and while downgrading should work the same way, for downgrades I prefer to completely remove a single package with its dependencies, then reinstall.

didi · #64 Post by **didi** » 2008-04-11 23:44

Excellent HOW-TO and also very interesting discussion

I now even understand the 'problem' I had when following the HOW-TO on installing nvidia drivers the Debian way.
I am now confident that I can install the latest nvidia drivers/dependencies from sid while staying at Lenny for the rest and actually know what I'm doing.

Thanks

and +1 on stickying this HOW-TO, excellent article on a hot topic which shouldn't end up on the 2nd (or later) page.

CreamFilledGiraffe · #65 Post by **CreamFilledGiraffe** » 2008-04-12 01:09

In that particular case they are the same package so it doesn't matter (to aptitude) where it gets if from. I believe it goes to unstable because it appears first in your sources.list

rickh · #66 Post by **rickh** » 2008-06-17 22:39

In that particular case they are the same package so it doesn't matter (to aptitude) where it gets if from. I believe it goes to unstable because it appears first in your sources.list

Was just reading through the thread, and the obvious truth of that observation sent me back to move "unstable" to the bottom of the examples. One less confusing element.

alidh · #67 Post by **alidh** » 2008-07-01 19:13

uh, if I remove the unstable sources from my sources.list I will get only Debian testing after a few weeks isn't???

hkoster1 · #68 Post by **hkoster1** » 2008-07-28 12:56

OK, it's five months to the day that I switched from pure Sid to mixed testing/Sid following this useful Howto. I haven't knowingly added any Sid packages, except the usual nvidia-glx and nvidia-sources stuff. Are there many Sid packages left in my system?

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henk@sid64:~$ apt-show-versions |grep unstable
gnome-cups-manager/unstable uptodate 0.31-3+b1
hpodder/unstable uptodate 1.1.5.0
kdeartwork/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kdeartwork-emoticons/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kdeartwork-misc/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kdeartwork-style/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kdeartwork-theme-icon/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kdeartwork-theme-window/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kdewallpapers/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kscreensaver/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
kscreensaver-xsavers/unstable uptodate 4:3.5.9-2
libgnomecupsui1.0-1c2a/unstable uptodate 0.31-3+b1
nvidia-glx/unstable uptodate 173.14.09-3
nvidia-kernel-source/unstable uptodate 173.14.09-3
xscreensaver/unstable uptodate 5.05-3
xscreensaver-data/unstable uptodate 5.05-3
xscreensaver-data-extra/unstable uptodate 5.05-3
xscreensaver-gl/unstable uptodate 5.05-3
xscreensaver-gl-extra/unstable uptodate 5.05-3
youtube-dl/unstable uptodate 2008.03.22-1

Not many, and there would have been even fewer if I hadn't pulled in Kaffeine (and some KDE dependencies) since the VLC package has problems with some codecs. Of the remainder: I use hpodder regularly, don't know why it isn't in testing; Gnome CUPS manager has changed quite a bit lately, so I can understand that it is still quite volatile; Youtube-dl, who knows...

Will this list get down to empty before Lenny going stable?

Telemachus · #69 Post by **Telemachus** » 2008-07-28 13:39

hkoster1 wrote:Will this list get down to empty before Lenny going stable?

I was actually just wondering this about the NVIDIA packages in particular. What, if anything, happens if they don't make it into Lenny before the freeze?

hkoster1 · #70 Post by **hkoster1** » 2008-07-28 16:50

OK, I'll reply to your post...

roooz · #71 Post by **roooz** » 2008-07-30 11:13

How can I have a mixed system with kde4.1? How can I make sure those 4.1 packages will be upgraded/ will stay up to date?

Thanks in advance,

rickh · #72 Post by **rickh** » 2008-07-30 13:49

As long as KDE4 stays in Experimental, I don't think you can, at least not with official repos. I don't believe you can point at Experimental as the "preferred" repository. If you can, it will almost certainly be a disaster. It's possible that one of the unofficial repositories includes KDE4 in their unstable repositories, but you'd better be careful.

roooz · #73 Post by **roooz** » 2008-11-20 15:51

Still very positive about this mixed system!

Question: I've set testing as 'default'. I can install a package from unstable doing:

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aptitude install -t unstable <package>

But what if I have another repro in my sourcelist? For example one of a multimedia distro, or from an particular package?

How do I install a package from that repro? And how can I search that repro?

rickh · #74 Post by **rickh** » 2008-11-20 16:13

Your "unofficial" repo will be included in any search you make as long as it is active in your sources.list

It doesn't even have to be testing. For instance, My preferred release is "unstable", but my debian-multimedia line in sources.list looks like this ...
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main

Therefore only "testing" applications (not unstable) from Multimedia will make it unto my system.

In other words a mixed system will update to the highest version it sees, unless it sees one in what you have defined as "preferred." If it sees one there, it looks no further.

It sounds complicated, but it's not.

roooz · #75 Post by **roooz** » 2008-11-20 18:21

rickh wrote:Your "unofficial" repo will be included in any search you make as long as it is active in your sources.list

It doesn't even have to be testing. For instance, My preferred release is "unstable", but my debian-multimedia line in sources.list looks like this ...
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main

Therefore only "testing" applications (not unstable) from Multimedia will make it unto my system.

In other words a mixed system will update to the highest version it sees, unless it sees one in what you have defined as "preferred." If it sees one there, it looks no further.

It sounds complicated, but it's not.

Ok, so let say there a package X in testing but a up to date one in unstable you install it with aptitude install -t unstable

But what if package X is the same in testing and unstable but there is a newer version in the 'onofficial' repo...
how do I install that package?

rickh · #76 Post by **rickh** » 2008-11-20 18:51

But what if package X is the same in testing and unstable but there is a newer version in the 'onofficial' repo...
how do I install that package?

If your sources.list identifies the 'onofficial' repo... as "testing", ...
deb http://www.unofficial_repo.com testing main
...it will install automatically

A typical example might be cinelerra

Your preferred release is "testing". Your sources.list might look like this:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.cinelerra_repo.org/ unstable main contrib non-free

# aptitude install -t unstable cinelerra
...would evaluate all the pieces of cinelerra from all three sources, and take the pieces from "testing" that matched the highest version, then the pieces from Debian "unstable" that matched the highest version, then the rest of the pieces from the cinelerra repo since its versions were the very highest.

That's slightly oversimplified, but not much.

roooz · #77 Post by **roooz** » 2008-11-20 19:31

Ok, and if i it is not a testing and not an unstable one, like:

deb http://apt.64studio.com/64studio/stable/ 64studio main
or
deb http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/jedit ./

?

And if I want to build my own repo, can I call it testing?

rickh · #78 Post by **rickh** » 2008-11-20 19:41

Sorry. I've made it as clear as I can ... maybe someone else is more into hand holding than I.

Obviously, your 1st example would require "-t stable" and the 2nd, as far as I'm concerned, should be installed with dpkg.

roooz · #79 Post by **roooz** » 2008-11-20 19:45

rickh wrote:Sorry. I've made it as clear as I can ... maybe someone else is more into hand holding than I.

Obviously, your 1st example would require "-t stable" and the 2nd, as far as I'm concerned, should be installed with dpkg.

ok, clear thanks...

that dpkg command how can I use it? or do you use wget first?

graysky · #80 Post by **graysky** » 2008-11-27 10:43

Great guide, rich. I'm interested in running iceweasel from the unstable repo on my lenny box. I created the /etc/apt/apt.conf and added the lie you suggested, updated aptitude, then:

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# aptitude install -t unstable iceweasel
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information      
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done  
The following packages will be upgraded:
  iceweasel 
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 206 not upgraded.
Need to get 1145kB of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Writing extended state information... Done
Err http://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main iceweasel 3.0.4-1
  404 Not Found [IP: 35.9.37.225 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/i/iceweasel/iceweasel_3.0.4-1_amd64.deb: 404 Not Found [IP: 35.9.37.225 80]
Reading package lists... Done             
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information      
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done

My /etc/apt/sources.list:

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# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
# 
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Lenny_ - Official RC amd64 NETINST Binary-1 20081105-22:41]/ lenny main

#deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main 

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/shames/debian-lenny/desktopfx/unstable/ ./
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt lenny main

Is there anything obvious I'm not doing here?