Question about Debian Unstable & Stable

[bassix-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org]

On 5/27/06, Daniel Armstrong <dwarmstrong-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> Something perhaps to consider in a similar vein... I am running a
> hard-disk install of Kanotix (essentially debian-unstable) and after
> running apt-get update, apt-get -u dist-upgrade today discovered that
> arts sound was busted in KDE.
>
> A quick look in the online forums revealed I wasn't alone with this
> problem. The problem package was identified and the solution was to
> simply roll back to a previous version, like so:
>
> # cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
> # dpkg -i libasound2_1.0.11-4_i386.deb
>
> I also learned about "pinning" a package to a certain version if you
> want to hold off for a bit on upgrades, by editing
> /etc/apt/preferences:
>
> Package: libasound2
> Pin: version 1.0.11-4
> Pin-Priority: 1001
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=unstable
> Pin-Priority: 500
>
> It worked, too. Fixing something that an upgrade rendered broken.
> However, this was only one troublesome package - I imagine things
> could get quite a bit messier if several packages were broken and many
> dependencies were involved.

Daniel, thanks for the info! I'm running a HD install of Kanotix as
well, and had the same issue. I also noticed a few font issues after a
couple of upgrades (sizes as well as anti-aliasing ugliness), also a
removable drive automounting problem.

The rollback and pinning process is something I'll make note of! (So I
guess I'll stick with unstable.)

-Steve.
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