reverting to 'standard' etch installation

On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 11:26:04AM +0000, michael wrote:
> Folks, I made a cuckoo (mess up) - I had installed Etch from netinst
> and done the upgrades. That was a while ago. Last night I decided I
> wanted gnomad2 from unstable so amended my /etc/apt/sources.list and
> installed it (along with other dependencies, particularly I remember
> OO being removed/(re)installed). Now I seem to be having problems
> with gdm/X (non-responding). I think I'd prefer the stable Etch
> without gnomad2, but how do I easily "unroll" what I did last night?
> I'm happy to re-install Etch from the CD but is there a quicker way
> and anyway not to lose the data on the HD?
> Pointers to FAQs (surely I'm not the first!) are most welcome!

Well, you have a mixed system now, and unstable, is, well, unstable.
Mixing unstable and stable makes, well, a mess.

Downgrading isn't supported. Removing the unstable from sources.list
will only make the unstable packages to be listed in aptitude as
something like "obsolete or locally installed".

The ideal situation would be to reinstall, but before that, here's what
I would try (not that I've ever done this, so this is totally untested).
Ensure that all your stuff (including /etc, /home, /usr/local,
/var/local) is backed-up.

1.
Remove unstable from /etc/apt/sources.list

2.
run Aptitude CUI (which I always do).

3.
Do an update (hit u)

4.
Now, look in the obsolete and locally installed stuff and make a
list. Remove gnomad2. Aptitude should also mark for removal
anything that only gnomad2 depends on.

5.
Now, anything else in the list are packages from stable that got
upgraded to unstable as part of installing gnomad2 (things that
gnomad2 required at a higher version than things in stable).
One at a time, find the same package name in the regular section
and see what depends on it and see if you have anything. Then,
mark for removal the package in obsolete, mark the stable
package for install and mark it for automatic.

6.
What that is done, everything in obsolete should be marked for
removal and you should have no packages marked broken.

7.
Hit 'g' and see what aptitude wants to do. If it looks right,
hit 'g' again to do it. Hope for the best.

Good luck.

Doug.

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