apt-get dist-downgrade?

[Ralf M.]

Hi!

Stupid question for debian users here: is there an easy way to
"downgrade" a distro from testing/sarge to stable/woody?

The reason I ask is that a couple of weeks ago I performed a
dist-upgrade on the Mac G3 running stable/woody. It was working just
fine but I needed some packaged that were only available in testing &
unstable and the libc6 package was not compatible. So I went for testing
by changing the apt-preferences and performed a dist-upgrade.

Bad idea. Now the mac will randomly look dead when I try to access it in
the morning -- no network access, nothing interactive session... I looks
kind of random too, sometime it's up for a couple of days, sometimes
more, sometimes less. I can't figure what is the source of the problem.

So I'd like to revert the packages to stable/woody. I changed
apt-preferences (pinned down testing) and did a dist-upgrade (dry run)
and apt-get just tells me everything's fine, I have the latest
packages... Hmmm not what I want. I could try removing all source.list
entries but the stable one maybe? My guess is apt-get will still tell me
I have the latest packages of everything. I don't feel like reinstalling
the whole system from scratch nor using apt-get to downgrade each
package individually.

Ideas welcome.
R/

[Travis Crump]

Post by Ralf M.
Hi!
Stupid question for debian users here: is there an easy way to
"downgrade" a distro from testing/sarge to stable/woody?
The reason I ask is that a couple of weeks ago I performed a
dist-upgrade on the Mac G3 running stable/woody. It was working just
fine but I needed some packaged that were only available in testing &
unstable and the libc6 package was not compatible. So I went for testing
by changing the apt-preferences and performed a dist-upgrade.
Bad idea. Now the mac will randomly look dead when I try to access it in
the morning -- no network access, nothing interactive session... I looks
kind of random too, sometime it's up for a couple of days, sometimes
more, sometimes less. I can't figure what is the source of the problem.
So I'd like to revert the packages to stable/woody. I changed
apt-preferences (pinned down testing) and did a dist-upgrade (dry run)
and apt-get just tells me everything's fine, I have the latest
packages...

Pin stable to >1000 and then try a dist-upgrade. It should /try/ to
work, but downgrading isn't really well-supported.

[rintek]

Post by Ralf M.
Hi!
Stupid question for debian users here: is there an easy way to
"downgrade" a distro from testing/sarge to stable/woody?
The reason I ask is that a couple of weeks ago I performed a
dist-upgrade on the Mac G3 running stable/woody. It was working just
fine but I needed some packaged that were only available in testing &
unstable and the libc6 package was not compatible. So I went for testing
by changing the apt-preferences and performed a dist-upgrade.
Bad idea. Now the mac will randomly look dead when I try to access it in
the morning -- no network access, nothing interactive session... I looks
kind of random too, sometime it's up for a couple of days, sometimes
more, sometimes less. I can't figure what is the source of the problem.
So I'd like to revert the packages to stable/woody. I changed
apt-preferences (pinned down testing) and did a dist-upgrade (dry run)
and apt-get just tells me everything's fine, I have the latest
packages... Hmmm not what I want. I could try removing all source.list
entries but the stable one maybe? My guess is apt-get will still tell me
I have the latest packages of everything. I don't feel like reinstalling
the whole system from scratch nor using apt-get to downgrade each
package individually.
Ideas welcome.
R/

To downgrade all packages to stable, edit /etc/apt/preferences as follows:

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



and run "apt-get upgrade", which forces downgrade due to Pin-priority >
1000. Be warned, there may be some small glitches in dependencies.

groetjes,

Rintek

[Antonio Rodriguez]

Post by Ralf M.
Hi!
Stupid question for debian users here: is there an easy way to
"downgrade" a distro from testing/sarge to stable/woody?
The reason I ask is that a couple of weeks ago I performed a

There is a nice set of instructions here in debian planet
http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=880
For me following a combination of the instructions given in the
comments worked best when I did it. Warning: You will have to do/have a
bunch of (--force-overwrite; manually rm maybe; good luck)
Is doable, but a pain.

[Antony Gelberg]

Post by Ralf M.
Hi!
Stupid question for debian users here: is there an easy way to
"downgrade" a distro from testing/sarge to stable/woody?

When I tried it, my glibc got totally shagged and f**ked up my system.
I'd be very interested if anyone can tell me how to do it "properly".
And that was after following other links mentioned in this thread.

A