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Table of Contents
Debian - Backports - Pinning Backports
I’m running Debian Etch because I prefer the stable Debian package tree. This is all great but the software is a little outdated compared to other distributions like Ubuntu. That is where backports come in. Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), so they will run without new libraries (wherever it is possible) on a stable Debian distribution. They recommend you to pick out single backports which fits your needs, and not to use all backports available here.
Using backports is simple
Add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free Run apt-get update You might get a error message
Reading package lists… Done W: GPG error: http://www.backports.org etch-backports Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY EA8E8B2116BA136C W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems This message comes on Debian Etch because you haven’t imported the backports keyring. It’s easily fixed by running the command
sudo apt-get install debian-backports-keyring
NOTE: Since all backports are deactivated by default, you need to tell the package manager to use the backports repository.
To install a newer version of nmap:
apt-get -t etch-backports install nmap
NOTE: It is important to remember that if you forget to tell apt-get that nmap is installed from backports and run another apt-get install nmap it will remove the backports package.
- A simple solution to this is to use pinning.
Use Pinning
Create or Edit /etc/apt/preferences.
- /etc/apt/preferences
Package: nmap Pin: release a=etch-backports Pin-Priority: 999
NOTE: The system will now remember that nmap is installed from the backports repository.