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To: debian-testing@lists.debian.org Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003
Recently I downgraded two mixed Debian stable/testing systems:
I first tried it in a sandbox (vmware) to collect some experience with it. After some failures I finally succeeded and took notes about the steps which I think were most relevant. These notes follow at the end.
Then I did the same with a real system, which succeeded on the first try :-)
On both systems even libc6 was successfully downgraded from version 2.3.1 to version 2.2.5.
I used the information from the previous thread plus extensive Google'ing.
Of course systems differ a lot from each other. So you might experience other problems - I can't guarantee for anything!
If you have the chance, try it in a sandbox first!
As I said it worked for me.
Good luck, Rudolf
I actually first installed woody, then upgraded it to testing (via apt-get dist-upgrade) and then applied the following steps to downgrade it to woody again.
See also second contribution in
http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=880
as well as
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200304/msg02477.html
Section 3.10 in
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html
and possibly others.
Search Google for: 'debian downgrading coreutils'
for: 'debian downgrading packages'
and for: 'apt pinning'Create /etc/apt/preferences with the contents:
Package: * Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 1001
Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 60
Package: * Pin: release a=unstable Pin-Priority: 50
With /etc/apt/sources.list pointing to a stable and a testing distribution do:
apt-get update apt-get -s upgrade (just to check what would happen) apt-get upgrade
Most likely errors will occur like:
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/debianutils_1.16_i386.deb (--unpack): trying to overwrite `/bin/readlink', which is also in package coreutils
In this case the woody packages which contain the conflicting file should be installed with '—force-overwrite'. After this 'apt-get upgrade' will run further up to the next conflict. If in doubt about which packages to install manually consult Debians packages search page: http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
Sometimes packages (in testing) depend on packages which do not exist in woody. This may be resolved by just removing the dependency packages. For example libpaperg_1.1.13 (testing) depends on libpaper1 and also libpaper-utils is in the way (both in testing): removing both by hand (—force-depends) allows libpaperg to be downgraded.
NOTE: coreutils is in testing only! To remove it four packages from woody must be installed first by hand: fileutils, shellutils, textutils and debianutils.
So continue the adventure similar to this:
dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/shellutils_2.0.11-11_i386.deb dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/textutils_2.0-12_i386.deb dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/debianutils_1.16_i386.deb apt-get upgrade dpkg --force-depends -r dselect dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.9.21_i386.deb apt-get upgrade dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/sysvinit_2.84-2woody1_i386.deb dpkg --force-depends -r libpaper1 libpaper-utils apt-get -f upgrade dpkg -r tktable-dev apt-get upgrade
After installation of all packages 'apt-get upgrade' might still have problems configuring these packages because of dependency problems. It may help to remove one of the dependency packages explicitly and then reinstall it again (together with further dependency packages if needed), as with libgnomeprint-bin which could not be configured since it depended on the yet unconfigured package libgnomeprint-data:
dpkg --force-depends -r libgnomeprint-data apt-get install libgnomeprint-bin libgnomeprint-data
Now this did set up and configure both libgnomeprint-bin as well as libgnomeprint-data and all the remaining packages :-))))
However: Still libc6 Version 2.3.1 was installed (from testing)!
To downgrade libc6 to Version 2.2.5 (woody) force it with:
apt-get install libc6/stable
This will again remove and downgrade a lot of things, in particular now package coreutils will be removed which should not be problem since the woody equivalents (fileutils, shellutils, textutils and debianutils) are installed already. Nevertheless, if no important packages are to be removed (without being reinstalled or downgraded or being obsolete in woody, always check apt-get first with option -s) then affirm the execution of this command with 'Yes, do as I say!' as required by apt-get.
A few packages from testing still remained. Another
apt-get upgrade
reduced their number by another five. Just 14 packages from testing remained which seem to be not very essential:
dictionaries-common/testing uptodate 0.9.51 gcc-3.3-base/testing uptodate 1:3.3-2 gnome-desktop-data/testing uptodate 2.2.2-1 initscripts/testing uptodate 2.85-4.1 libgnomecanvas2-common/testing uptodate 2.2.1-1 libgnomeui-common/testing uptodate 2.2.0.1-2 libwnck-common/testing uptodate 2.2.2-1 python2.2-extclass/testing uptodate 1.2.0zope-2.5.1-1.2 python2.2-gadfly/testing uptodate 1.0.0-3 python2.2-htmlgen/testing uptodate 2.2.2-9 sysv-rc/testing uptodate 2.85-4.1 wenglish/testing uptodate 2.0-2.4 wngerman/testing uptodate 20030222-1 xprt-common/testing uptodate 0.0.8.cvs20030508-1
The rest of the system is now in woody again as confirmed by
apt-show-version
Finally, it seems to be a good idea to restart demons that depend on libc6 or just to reboot the machine (if possible) in order to make the demons depend on the new (old) libraries.
Rudolf Lohner
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