On 13-06-17, Pétùr wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I have a computer which does not need anymore to be running the unstable > version. I would like to migrate it to stable at some point. > > If I backup the home and rsync it on a new installation of Debian > stable, I will have problems with the downgrade of softwares settings. > > I am not in a hurry and could slowly migrate to stable. But I am not > sure changing the repositories to stable and wait with no update during > a while is a good idea. > > I could not think of a proper (and somehow automatic) way to do this. Is > there one? > > Pétùr >
Theoretically, if you put all your sources to stable and pin stable with Pin-Priority of 1001 all your packages will be downgraded to stable version. But it is not supported and you can expect some breakage while doing it. As for new install, you can do dpkg --get-selections > package.list, to backup your selection of packages and later restore it with dpkg --set-selections < package.list, followed with apt-get dselect-upgrade. There are also methods with aptitude and apt-mark to backup list of packages, that can get you separated lists of auto installed packages and manually installed packages. As for backup of home, you can exclude things that you think might cause problem on your new stable install. So, just backup important stuff like your personal data and some config files that you know will work when downgraded, live vimrc, muttrc and stuff. You probably want to exclude various config files of desktop environments and stuff like that.