Re: How automatic are backport package updates?

From	Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Re: How automatic are backport package updates?
Date	2021-01-12 17:30 +0100
Message-ID	<BwuIq-KT-13@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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Michael Grant wrote: 
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 10:35:05AM -0500, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > Are you running a production system?
> 
> Yes, I guess you could call it production.  It's my family & friends server.  In all the time I have been running Debian Testing, I have never once suffered a serious or protracted disaster as you envision.  Maybe I'm lucky!  Little things, yes, like the systemd thing the other day.  On very rare occasions, I have had to pin a package.
> 
> > If so, you should be running buster, and considering moving to
> > the next stable release no sooner than a few weeks after the
> > transition to bullseye. You should accept security updates as
> > soon as is convenient for you, on an ongoing basis. Backports
> > are to solve specific issues.
> 
> Is it then possible to add the /testing line to be able to occasionally pull in specific packages from testing?  I think I would need a preferences.d/something.pref file.
> 
> deb     http://mirrors.linode.com/debian/   testing main contrib non-free
> deb-src http://mirrors.linode.com/debian/   testing main contrib non-free
> 
> Clearly if the package I wanted to install from testing would suck in a lot of dependencies, then I likely would not do that, but I don't want it to suck things in from testing automatically otherwise, I am then running testing.
> 
> Is this setup possible or am I really just going to have to be patient if something isn't in backports?

Yes. See

https://blog.randomstring.org/2016/08/17/debian-backports-pinning/

which gives examples for jessie and jessie-backports, but can
easily be translated into buster and testing, if that's what you
want.

With testing set to priority between 1 and 99, it will only
install packages if you explicitly ask for them, say

apt install -t testing packagename

The caution regarding dependencies that you have mentioned is spot-on.

-dsr-

Thread

Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-01-09 07:00 +0100
  Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Thorsten Glaser <t.glaser@tarent.de> - 2021-01-09 15:00 +0100
    Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-01-10 10:10 +0100
      Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2021-01-11 14:10 +0100
        Re: How automatic are backport package updates? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2021-01-11 16:40 +0100
          Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Grant <mgrant@grant.org> - 2021-01-12 16:30 +0100
            Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2021-01-12 16:40 +0100
              Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Grant <mgrant@grant.org> - 2021-01-12 17:10 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2021-01-12 17:30 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-01-12 20:30 +0100
              Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Grant <mgrant@grant.org> - 2021-02-12 18:10 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk> - 2021-02-12 18:20 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2021-02-13 15:40 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Grant <mgrant@grant.org> - 2021-02-13 16:50 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2021-02-13 17:40 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Grant <mgrant@grant.org> - 2021-02-13 18:00 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-02-13 18:10 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-02-13 18:30 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-02-13 18:30 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-02-13 18:00 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Grant <mgrant@grant.org> - 2021-02-13 18:20 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2021-02-15 14:30 +0100
                Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-02-16 10:20 +0100
            Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-01-12 21:00 +0100
        Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-01-11 20:30 +0100
          Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2021-01-11 21:00 +0100
            Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-01-11 22:00 +0100
              Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2021-01-12 01:20 +0100
            Re: How automatic are backport package updates? Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2021-01-12 09:00 +0100

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