Preventing Debian Package Upgrades
Monday, May 12th, 2008
The simple mechanism Debian has for performing package upgrades, apt-get, is often touted as a good thing and indeed it is. But sometimes you will have a package installed that you absolutely do not want to be upgraded.
There are two ways that you can achieve this, depending on what it is that you’re trying to achieve.
If you have a locally modified package which you don’t want to upgrade then you can put this on “hold”. This means that even if a newer version of that package is available it will not be upgraded. Ever.
This does mean that you run the risk of being behind the curve, and missing out on a security fix, but that’s something that you will have to deal with yourself.