problem with apt and sid repo and preferences

[alirezaimi]

Hi
I have a little problem with apt in my debian testing installed on my laptop,
I config one preference and use it until now with this goal that testing is my base distribution and sid is when i want package that does not exist in testing repo like now :

# cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/imipreg
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 1100

Package: *
Pin: release a=sid
Pin-Priority: 100

when i run dist-upgrade, firefox that exist in sid must be delete !

# apt dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
firefox
The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
libnss3
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 downgraded, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,319 kB of archives.
After this operation, 215 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n

And this is firefox and one library that i installed it from sid:

# apt-cache policy firefox libnss3
firefox:
Installed: 94.0-1
Candidate: 94.0-1
Version table:
*** 94.0-1 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
libnss3:
Installed: 2:3.72-1
Candidate: 2:3.70-1
Version table:
*** 2:3.72-1 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
2:3.70-1 1100
1100 http://deb.debian.org/debian testing/main amd64 Packages

Normal apt install for firefox :

# apt install firefox
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
firefox : Depends: libnss3 (>= 2:3.71~) but 2:3.70-1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

And another way to do it :

# apt install firefox libnss3=2:3.72-1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done

Suggested packages:
fonts-stix | otf-stix fonts-lmodern
The following NEW packages will be installed:
firefox
The following packages will be upgraded:
libnss3
1 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 56.2 MB/57.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 215 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 firefox amd64 94.0-1 [56.2 MB]
Fetched 47.5 MB in 1min 2s (762 kB/s)
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 279144 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libnss3_2%3a3.72-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libnss3:amd64 (2:3.72-1) over (2:3.70-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package firefox.
Preparing to unpack .../firefox_94.0-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking firefox (94.0-1) ...
Setting up libnss3:amd64 (2:3.72-1) ...
Setting up firefox (94.0-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.32-4) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-2) ...
Processing triggers for mailcap (3.70) ...
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.4-2+b1) ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.26-1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.36.0-1) ...

What is wrong with apt and my configurations ?
thanks.

[Bloom]

Your policy shows that Sid has a priority of 500 and Testing a priority of 100. That means that after a dist-upgrade, your system is now Sid and not Testing anymore. Live with it or re-install Testing.

To keep Testing pristine, you need to use a preferences file like this:

Code: Select all

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -10

This gives Testing a priority oi 900 and all other Debian-repo's a priority of -10. If you add Sid, nothing from Sid will get installed and no Testing package will be upgraded to Sid unless you specifically tell it to.

[Deb-fan]

Dang it for record a pin-priority above 1000 ... such as 1001 will downgrade pkgs for that repo. Having unstable pinned at 100 is fine but not having testing set as it is, that high. 900 would be okay, so would 500. Your install is fine just adjust your pinning. 4-record take 2, not that matters and running whatever version of FF happened to be in Sid at the time never caused any problems but imo there are better ways to have the latest Firefox, such as directly downloaded from Mozilla and running from users /home. Can be set to automatically check for and update as they come out just as they do for Windows users.

Plenty of threads (as in probably plenty of 1,000's) on that topic at this pt. Ah well ... one thing people never get tired of typing about is web-browsers.