On 09/24/2016 06:02 PM, Glenn English wrote: >> On Sep 24, 2016, at 7:44 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: >> >> For my own education, I'm not sure what you mean by "backup your current >> state >> before upgrading"--does that mean a full backup of your system, or is there >> a >> way to somehow save the current "state" of the package list on your system >> so >> that you can easily request those packages be restored if something goes >> wrong? > > I think that saving the contents of /var/cache/apt/archive(s?) will > save copies of all the .debs installed on your machine. OTOH, it also > gets .debs that *used* to be on your machine. If you're running sid, > bring a big thumbdrive...
Note that the new apt wrapper removes .debs after installation by default. (apt-get and aptitude will keep the .deb files though.) So if you use apt install foo or apt upgrade then the packages that were downloaded won't be there after the installation completed successfully. (They will be in the cache directory after download and before the installation is done.) You can change that behavior via: echo 'Binary::apt::APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages "true";' \ > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01keep-debs (See also /usr/share/doc/apt/NEWS.Debian.gz for details.) Regarding the original problem: I'd recommend to anyone running sid to also have testing in their sources.list - so they can force the installation of an older package version while a transition is still ongoing. Also, it's IMHO a good idea to subscribe to debian-release for anyone running pure sid, so they can have an overview over currently active transitions. Regards, Christian