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  • Re: Don't set APT::Default-Release to backports (was: Re: Firefox and V

    From Roger Price@21:1/5 to Max Nikulin on Sat Feb 1 19:30:01 2025
    On Sat, 1 Feb 2025, Max Nikulin wrote:

    On 01/02/2025 02:34, Eddie wrote:
    In Synaptic go to "Settings" - 'Preferences" - "Distributions"
    then select "Prefer Versions From" - backports

    Do not do it. It is not a supposed way to use backports. <https://backports.debian.org/>
    It is therefore recommended to only select single backported packages
    that fit your needs, and not use all available backports.

    I find the instructions for synaptic at wiki.debian.org/Backports are incorrect and misleading. It seems to me now that synaptic is not the correct tool for managing backported packages, apt on the command line is much preferable.

    I do not use Synaptic, but from another message in this thread I suspect that it sets APT::Default-Release somewhere in /etc/apt/apt.conf or /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/. This is a deprecated setting with some non-obvious pitfalls: <https://wiki.debian.org/AptConfiguration#Be_careful_with_APT::Default-Release>

    For those who followed the suggestion, I recommend to inspect /etc/apt/apt.conf and /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ and to *remove* the APT::Default-Release line.

    I grepped through /etc/apt/apt.conf and /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ and found no cases of APT::Default-Release.

    If some equivalent of "apt upgrade" has been executed since setting default release to backports then the following command should report much more packages than intentionally installed from backports and their dependencies):

    apt list '?narrow(~i,~Astable-backports)'

    With option -a this command reports

    yt-dlp/stable-backports,now 2025.01.26-1~bpo12+1 all [installed]
    yt-dlp/stable 2023.03.04-1 all

    so only yt-dlp is reported.

    Roger, you likely did not do an action similar to "apt update" after adding the backports repository.

    I ran apt update after adding the backports repository. I got this output:

    root@maria ~ emacs /etc/apt/sources.list
    root@maria ~ apt update
    Get:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease [48.0 kB]
    Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
    Get:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease [55.4 kB]
    Get:4 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports InRelease [59.0 kB]
    Get:5 https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease [1,825 B]
    Hit:6 https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable stable InRelease
    Get:7 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/main amd64 Packages [280 kB]
    Get:8 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/main Translation-en [233 kB]
    Get:9 https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable/main amd64 Packages [1,215 B]
    Get:10 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/contrib amd64 Packages [5,616 B]
    Get:11 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/contrib Translation-en [5,448 B]
    Get:12 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/non-free amd64 Packages [11.1 kB]
    Get:13 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/non-free Translation-en [7,320 B]

    I only need backports for one package, yt-dlp (to download a Bahco service manual in a .mkv file). I will now remove backports from sources.list, and re-run apt update.

    Thanks to everyone who replied to my original post. Roger

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