On 14/02/2016 12:07 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 10:12:15PM +1100, Brendan Simon wrote: >> Is there a way to restrict apt to a **specific release** of Jessie. >> e.g. 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, ... ?? >> >> I build root filesystems for embedded systems. The sources.list is set >> to Jessie, but the contents of the generated rootfs can change from one >> day to the next if there have been updates. I want to lock into a >> specific release and be sure that the packages wont change if I build >> now and 6 or 12 months later. >> >> What's the best way to do this? > Short answer: No, if you ever want security updates / other fixes. > > Longer answer: not by design. Mirror 8.4 on the day of release, get the DVDs > / build a Blu-Ray .iso using jigdo > and use these for hoever long. > > Jessie is Debian 8 - so all changes to Debian 8 apply through the lifetimme > of the release. > > Point releases are snapshots rolling up security fixes etc. to that point. > You don't _need_ them if you keep > systems up to date. > > In general, locking to a specific point in time / a "golden image" and using > it for a period would be a bad > move because of the fact that the release receives fixes. > > Sizes shouldn't change that drastically - in general, packages replace their > predecesors precisely so net > change is of the order of kB. > > Hope this helps > > AndyC
Thanks Andy. I guess the DVDs might be the way to go. The thing is when you are deploying something to lots of sites (e.g. an embedded data logger in many remote locations), it's important to know exactly what versions you have created and installed, and more importantly be able to rebuild the exact same system sometime down the track. e.g. 6-12 months later, when bug is reported and you need to be able to replicate the build and make changes based on that build. Often a patch release will be deployed based on the a build from that point in time, so as to not introduce any "new features" or unknown changes in behaviour. Thanks, Brendan.
