5

I am trying to install a previous version of subversion from snapshot.debian.org, as described in How to install the previous version of a .deb package and pin it?. I have setup the repository and the pinning as I believe to be correct, but it is not working as I expected, as the apt-cache-policy output shows. Where are the errors in it?

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/snapshots.list

# snapshots.debian.org                                          
# added for subversion 1.9.2 subversion bug #803725             
deb http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian unstable main

/etc/apt/preferences.d/subversion

Package: subversion
Pin: origin snapshot.debian.org
Pin: version 1.9.2-1
Pin-Priority: 700

apt-cache policy subversion

subversion:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.9.2-3
  Package pin: (not found)
  Version table:
     1.9.2-3 700
        500 http://http.debian.net/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
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  • Thomas Dickey's answer may have provided a working solution, but I'd like to know if there's an answer to the question posed in the title. i.e. can you base a pin on both the origin and the version. – mc0e Oct 31 '16 at 13:21

1 Answers1

4

I think the problem is that you cannot use snapshot.debian.org directly as a source of packages. To see this, select a URL from that site as the source in sources.list, e.g.,

deb http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20151018T155352Z/ testing main
deb-src http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20151018T155352Z/ testing main

(commenting out the other settings), and doing

apt-get update

to force it to use only that source (as done in Downgrade and force some packages on Debian to a previous version). When I do this, I get

$ apt-get update
Hit http://snapshot.debian.org testing InRelease
E: Release file for http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20151018T155352Z/dists/testing/InRelease is expired (invalid since 16d 9h 47min 8s). Updates for this repository will not be applied.

That was the last snapshot before 1.9.2-2 was released. Instead, found in a mailing list reply Re: Plasma 5 doesn't start after update on Stretch by Matthias Bodenbinder, he suggested

  • downloading the specific version needed
  • install the package, i.e., using dpkg
  • pin the (now-installed) package (his example uses no origin).

To test the instructions, I used these links from the initial release of subversion_1.9.1-1:

and installed them:

$ dpkg -i libsvn1_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb subversion-tools_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb subversion_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb
dpkg: warning: downgrading libsvn1:amd64 from 1.9.2-2 to 1.9.1-1
(Reading database ... 371500 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack libsvn1_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libsvn1:amd64 (1.9.1-1) over (1.9.2-2) ...
Preparing to unpack subversion-tools_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking subversion-tools (1.9.1-1) over (1.9.1-1) ...
Preparing to unpack subversion_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking subversion (1.9.1-1) over (1.9.1-1) ...
Setting up libsvn1:amd64 (1.9.1-1) ...
Setting up subversion (1.9.1-1) ...
Setting up subversion-tools (1.9.1-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-22) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.4-1) ...

Then (in /etc/apt/preferences.d/subversion):

Package: libsvn1
Pin: version 1.9.1-1
Pin-Priority: 1000

Package: subversion-tools
Pin: version 1.9.1-1
Pin-Priority: 1000

Package: subversion
Pin: version 1.9.1-1
Pin-Priority: 1000

and finally

$ apt-cache policy
Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing-updates/main Translation-en
 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing-updates/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=testing-updates,n=stretch-updates,l=Debian,c=main
     origin ftp.us.debian.org
 500 http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates/main Translation-en
 500 http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=testing,n=stretch,l=Debian-Security,c=main
     origin security.debian.org
 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main Translation-en
 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=testing,n=stretch,l=Debian,c=main
     origin ftp.us.debian.org
Pinned packages:
     subversion -> 1.9.1-1
     libsvn1 -> 1.9.1-1
     subversion-tools -> 1.9.1-1
Thomas Dickey
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