[sclug] Downgrading Debian?

[Simon Huggins]

On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 08:33:12PM +0100, Will Dickson wrote:
> I have a debian installation that I upgraded from stable to testing in
> the usual way. However, I've since decided that this was the wrong
> thing under the circumstances - not that there's anything wrong with
> Testing per se, but the machine in question is a production server and
> ought to be running Stable, as a matter of policy more than anything
> else.

You could sort of use pinning for this with an appropriate
/etc/apt/preferences and with both stable and testing lines in
/etc/apt/sources.list.

Something like:
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 99

However, be prepared to fix a lot of breakage.

I did this on a mixed unstable/testing system and it worked but I only
had a few packages to change and no important libraries.

You may well end up with a broken system.  Downgrades are rarely if ever
tested and whilst they will work for simple packages, complicated
libraries or libraries that have changed names may well cause it all to
break.

Having said all that, the only other alternative is to reinstall stable
so you may as well backup your stuff and try this :-)

Let me know if it works.


Simon.

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