Package: apt
Version: 2.2.2
Severity: minor
Dear Maintainer,
On some of my hosts I have a single or a very small number of packages
that I am only allowed to upgrade with specific procedures, pre-arranged
maintenance window and so on.
But for the rest of the packages I want to install Debian (security)
updates as soon as possible.
"apt-mark hold" sounds exactly like what I want.
I hold the package, and with normal upgrade/dist-upgrade it works
exactly as expected.
But when I then upgrade these single package later using --ignore-hold,
the hold flag is lost afterwards.
The flag is documented in "man apt-get" as
--ignore-hold
Ignore package holds; this causes apt-get to ignore a hold placed
on a package. This may be useful in conjunction with dist-upgrade
to override a large number of undesired holds. Configuration Item:
APT::Ignore-Hold.
So I expect the flag on the package to be ignored for this apt-get
execution, not changed or removed.
Example with docker-ce packages (just because they have multiple
versions in their repository so it was easy to get back to an old
release to show here):
==> Starting with an oudated package version installed
# apt-mark hold docker-ce docker-ce-cli
docker-ce set on hold.
docker-ce-cli set on hold.
# apt-mark showhold
docker-ce
docker-ce-cli
==> Hold flags set
# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
docker-ce docker-ce-cli
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
==> A normal dist-upgrade does not touch them, as they are held.
# apt-get install --ignore-hold docker-ce docker-ce-cli
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
aufs-tools cgroupfs-mount | cgroup-lite
Recommended packages:
apparmor docker-ce-rootless-extras
The following held packages will be changed:
docker-ce docker-ce-cli
The following packages will be upgraded:
docker-ce docker-ce-cli
2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 66.2 MB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
...
==> apt called with --ignore-hold ignores the hold, and upgrades them.
# apt-mark showhold
#
==> But afterwards hold flag is lost!
==> Now whenever the next package release comes out every
==> "apt-get dist-upgrade" will upgrade them, easy to miss
==> and abort when processing a bigger number of hosts.
Greetings,
Haegar
-- Package-specific info:
-- (/etc/apt/preferences present, but not submitted) --
-- (/etc/apt/preferences.d/kde-experimental.disabled present, but not
submitted) --
-- (/etc/apt/sources.list present, but not submitted) --
-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'oldstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii adduser 3.118
ii debian-archive-keyring 2021.1.1
ii gpgv 2.2.27-1
ii libapt-pkg6.0 2.2.2
ii libc6 2.31-9
ii libgcc-s1 10.2.1-6
ii libgnutls30 3.7.1-1
ii libseccomp2 2.5.1-1
ii libstdc++6 10.2.1-6
ii libsystemd0 247.3-3
Versions of packages apt recommends:
ii ca-certificates 20210119
Versions of packages apt suggests:
ii apt-doc 2.2.2
ii aptitude 0.8.13-3
ii dpkg-dev 1.20.7.1
ii gnupg 2.2.27-1
ii gnupg1 1.4.23-1.1
ii gnupg2 2.2.27-1
ii powermgmt-base 1.36
ii synaptic 0.90.2
-- debconf-show failed
