installing selected packages from unstable onto debian stable

[Michael Coburn]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to install certain packages from unstable (i.e. Request
Tracker 3.2) onto a debian stable server, and I need apt to satisfy all
the related dependancies -- upgrading to perl 5.8.4, among others
(there's about 30 or so to satisfy).

I have tried with the following lines in /etc/apt/sources.list:
--------
deb http://debian.yorku.ca/debian stable main non-free contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.yorku.ca/debian unstable main non-free contrib
--------
but when I run apt-get update I receive errors when apt is merging the
packages:
--------
Reading Package Lists... Error!
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
E: Error occured while processing plptools-dev (NewPackage)
E: Problem with MergeList
/var/lib/apt/lists/debian.yorku.ca_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-i386_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
--------
I've tried firing apt-get install -t unstable request-tracker3.2 , but
not surprisingly it tells me that the package cannot be found.

Am I going about this the wrong way, is there some other method to pull
packages from unstable & satisfying dependancies without upgrading whole
system to unstable?  I've also considered commenting out the stable line
in sources.list, but I'm not keen on upgrading other packages than what
I really need to run Request Tracker 3.2.  I guess I could always pull
down individual .deb packages for each of the dependancies, but that
seems terribly inefficient, and prone to error.  Finally I've looked at
"Tracking a distribution using APT" in the debian reference manual, but
it's not clear to me the benefit of pursuing this line of action against
unstable.  Thoughts anyone?

Any help would be appreciated.  I do apologise if this has already been
covered in a previous posting. I tried to search the list on gmane but
it kept timing out. :(

Thanks again in advance,
--
michael
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