> Hi, > > I'm back to debian after a couple of years with Redhat/Mandrake. What > triggered the change was the possibility to upgrade certain packages, > without having a to perform a full reinstall. Anyway, here is my > question: > > How do I safely revert to a previous status. To be specific: I > installed a few packages from the unstable branch, which required > upgrading certain others. I now want to go back: deinstall these > "unstable" packages, and downgrade the others. I know precisely which > status I want (say /var/lib/dpkg/status.yesterday.3.gz). So I > imagined to replace /var/lib/dpkg/status with this uncompressed file. > Then dselect shows only my old selections, but it completely forgot > what was really installed. So I suppose this is really a dangerous > point to start with. >
Perhaps by trying to diff the uncompressed /var/lib/dpkg/status.yesterday.3.gz with current /var/lib/dpkg/status and running dpkg --downgrade (do not sure the exact option)? > Any help very welcome! > > On a similar tone: is there a way to undo the selection process in > dselect. I suppose I am not the only one to have lost the opportunity > to scan through "new" packages, by hitting return one time too much. > > All in all, an undo function would be very reassuring. Looking back, > this is what really makes me nervous when I start dselect (together > with those bloody messages that are lost forever after a couple of > screens...). > IIRC there are more then one way. Try hitting ? and look for k (for keys?), for example. Isn't X (Capital X) does what you want?
