If you find some broken dependencies or bugs in these packages, tell me and don't report bugs to the BTS.
Christian Marillat marillat@debian.org
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.debian.user Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007
Is it possible to temporarily disable a repository? If so, how?
I'm using ffmpeg from debian-multimedia repository, but I want to use the version from official Debian lenny repository instead temporarily. What's the easiest way of doing that?
thanks
Ref:
$ apt-cache policy ffmpeg
ffmpeg:
Installed: 3:20070719-0.0
Candidate: 3:20070719-0.0
Version table:
*** 3:20070719-0.0 0
600 http://debian-multimedia.gnali.org testing/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
0.cvs20070307-6 0
600 http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca lenny/main Packages
50 http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca unstable/main Packages
% apt-get -t lenny install ffmpeg Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done ffmpeg is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1126 not upgraded.
Try
apt-get install ffmpeg/lenny
or
apt-get install ffmpeg=0.cvs20070307-6
If you want to change priorities for an entire archive then you probably have to use package pinning (see the manpage for apt_preferences).
Florian Kulzer http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
by Steve on Mon 28 Aug 2006
One of the unofficial Debian project resources which doesn't get the attention it deserves is the Debian Snapshot site. The site contains a mirror of old Debian packages, which can be very useful for system recovery.
In most normal cases you won't ever need to use it, unless you're wanting to compare two different package versions to see changes, or do other non-standard things. However when you do need to use it you'll learn what a big lifesaver it is!
The biggest use for the site, for me, has been for recovering from broken package updates. Whilst these are rare in the Debian Stable and Testing releases they can be an issue when running Debian unstable.
As a cromulent example the Debian Xen packages available in unstable have recently become broken - they panic on boot. Reverting the package was difficult since the working copy had vanished from the Debian package repository, but the snapshot service allowed me to recover easily.
In my case this was the only option since the local package cache (in /var/cache/apt/archives) had been cleaned already - and the previous package was unavailable on the Debian mirror.
Thankfully kernel packages are nicely built such that you can have multiple versions installed simultaneously. This is a good thing as the Debian packaging system generally doesn't support package downgrades.
This is the situation I was in:
I had a working Xen setup with linux-image-2.6.16-1-xen-686.
A new version of this package linux-image-2.6.16-2-xen-686 came out.
I upgraded to the new version and had an unbootable system.
Booting with Knoppix let me attempt recovery
But the -1- package wasn't on the local machine.
And it had also been removed replaced on the Debian mirrors
Had I merely wanted to recover the machine I would have installed a non-Xen kernel upon the system and been back up and running. But without Xen I couldn't complete several important jobs, so I really wanted to revert back to the non-broken version of the package.
This is the point where I remembered that the Debian snapshot server existed.
Searching the archive for the old revision gave me some lines to add to my sources.list file:
deb http://snapshot.debian.net/archive pool linux-2.6 deb-src http://snapshot.debian.net/archive pool linux-2.6
Using these lines recovery became simple:
apt-get update
apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.16-1-xen \
linux-image-2.6.16-1-xen-686 \
linux-modules-2.6.16-1-xen-686
Once those downloads completed I could rebuild my deleted initrd image and reboot into a working Xen system.
Of course if you deliberately run "older" packages you might discover that these get upgraded the next time you run "apt-get upgrade". Thankfully this is simple to avoid by holding your packages.
deb http://snapshot.debian.net/archive/date/7-days-ago/debian unstable main contrib non-free
^^^^ this is a good way of ensuring a safty net. :-)
by Anonymous (217.156.xx.xx) on Thu 14 Sep 2006
documented on: 2007.07.30
To retrieve the latest list of Debian mirrors, run (as root)
# apt-spy update
To find the fastest mirror in North America for testing, run
# apt-spy -d testing -a north-america
% apt-spy -d stable -a North-America -w /tmp/apt-spy.site.lst -n 10 Writing new sources.list file: /etc/apt/sources.list writing topfile: /tmp/apt-spy.site.lst
% apt-spy -d etch -i /tmp/apt-spy.site.lst
SERVER: gulus.usherbrooke.ca
Benchmarking FTP...
Error: The requested URL returned error: 404
Benchmarking HTTP...
Downloaded 4073916 bytes in 12.85 seconds
Download speed: 309.65 kB/sec
SERVER: cudlug.cudenver.edu
Benchmarking FTP...
Error: The requested URL returned error: 404
Benchmarking HTTP...
Downloaded 4067495 bytes in 12.99 seconds
Download speed: 305.85 kB/sec
[...]
% cat /etc/apt/sources.list # sources.list generated by apt-spy v3.1 deb http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/debian/ stable main deb-src http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/debian/ stable main deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main
% cat /tmp/apt-spy.site.lst gulus.usherbrooke.ca:/debian/:/debian/: cudlug.cudenver.edu:/debian/:/debian/: debian.uchicago.edu:/debian/:/debian/: mirror.cs.wisc.edu:/pub/mirrors/linux/debian/:/pub/mirrors/linux/debian/: ftp3.nrc.ca:/debian/:/debian/: mirror.peer1.net::/debian/: distro.ibiblio.org:/pub/linux/distributions/debian/:/pub/linux/distributions/debian/: mirrors.geeks.org:/debian/:/debian/: debian.fifi.org:/pub/debian/:/debian/: debian.secsup.org:/pub/linux/debian/:/:
OPTIONS
-d distribution Debian distribution to use. Sensible values would be `stable', `testing' or `unstable'. This value is directly used in the generated sources.list, and is required unless updating.
-a area This will cause only servers in the specified area to be benchmarked. By default, valid values for area are `Africa', `Asia', `Europe', `North-America', `Oceania' and `South-America'.
-w file write a number of top servers to file in a format suitable for use with the -i option. The number of servers to output can be specified with the -n option, and defaults to 5.
-n number the number of top servers to write with the -w option.
-i file use file as input for apt-spy. You should generate this input file using the -w option.
$ netselect-apt testing Using distribution testing. Retrieving the list of mirrors from www.debian.org...
Choosing a main Debian mirror using netselect. Running netselect to choose 1 out of 275 addresses.
netselect was unable to find a mirror, this probably means that you are behind a firewall and it is blocking traceroute.
Choose the fastest Debian mirror with netselect
netselect-apt will choose the fastest Debian mirror by downloading the full mirror list and uses netselect to find the best one. netselect-apt writes a sources.list(5) file that can be used with apt(8).
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 03:37:11 -0500
> I'd like to use apt-spy to find the fastest http or ftp servers for the > testing distro of debian. First, i ran apt-spy update -m ~/mirrors > > Then, apt-spy -d testing -o ~/my_sources -m ~/mirrors -a 'North-America' > > But when i run this, i only get output from 7 sources...
Try using "-e" with a number greater than 7, and changing /etc/apt-spy.conf so that under "North-America" US is first (if you are in the US.)
Bill Marcum
> But when i run this, i only get output from 7 sources... > mirror.direct.ca, debian.yorku.ca, debian.pipcom.com, debian.kida.net, > ftp3.nrc.ca, sunsite.ualberta.ca, less.cogeco.net
There seems to be some glitch, perhaps with the "North-America" switch. You've only tested Canadian mirrors. (pipcom.com, kida.net, and cogeco.net are Canadian even though they're not .ca domains.)
Anyway, you'll likely get better info on one of the Debian mailing lists.
John-Paul Stewart