Subject: how to avoid some upgrades from a distrib

From: Eric Delaunay <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 18:47:23 +0200 (MET DST)

Hello,

  I would avoid upgrade of few packages when I upgrade my system from a
new distribution.
Packages I should not upgrade are "base", "netscape" and few others. "base"
because I changed some rights on devices (under /dev) and I don't want to
reset them (and "base" is not required to upgrade (see package description)).
"netscape" because I don't want to upgrade it synchronously with system
upgrade (mostly because it's only an installer that require netscape tar to
be present in /tmp :( ).

Is there a way to tell dselect/dpkg to skip some installed packages during an
upgrade without removing them from distribution ? (if provided on a cdrom, it
hard to erase them ;) )
(dpkg is called from dselect passing -iGROEB options that recursively parse
distribution directories and upgrade *all* packages previously installed).

Thanks in advance.

-- 
 Eric Delaunay                 | "La guerre justifie l'existence des militaires.
 [email-masked] | En les supprimant." Henri Jeanson (1900-1970)

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From: Christian Hudon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 17:58:00 -0700 (PDT)

>   I would avoid upgrade of few packages when I upgrade my system from a

The concept you're looking for is 'Hold'. Just move the highlight to the
packages you don't want upgraded and press 'H' to put them on hold. When
you do want to upgrade them, just 'unhold' them by pressing the 'G' key.

Here are the relevant lines from the 'Select' help screen of dselect:

Mark packages for later processing:
 +, Insert  install or upgrade      =, H  hold in present state
 -, Delete  remove                  :, G  unhold: upgrade or leave uninstalled
 _          remove & purge config                            

                                         :-)

  Christian

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From: Eric Delaunay <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 10:15:29 +0200 (MET DST)

>  -, Delete  remove                  :, G  unhold: upgrade or leave uninstalled

In fact, it's in help page ;)
But I didn't saw it a while ago then used dpkg directly for months.
Yes, I should read help pages carefuly before posting so trivial query :-(
I'll go through dselect at next upgrade :-)
Thanks for your reply.