apt wants to downgrade packages with pin-priority less than 1000

[Martin Meredith]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 09:14:56PM +0200, Alon Swartz wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> Firstly, let me introduce myself, I am one of the developers for TurnKey
> Linux, an opensource project that develops a family of lightweight
> installable Ubuntu based Live CD appliances optimized for various
> server-type tasks.
> 
> Now, down to business...
> 
> Summary
> -------
> 
> apt will attempt to downgrade an installed package if the pin-priority
> of the package is greater than 99.
> 
> apt will not downgrade when pin-priorty is 99 or below because the
> already installed package automatically gets a priority of 100.
> 
> According to the apt_preferences manpage (mentioned several times), apt
> will *never* downgrade a package unless the priority of an available
> version exceeds 1000.
> 
> Details
> -------
> 
> I came across this issue because our package repository has not yet been
> updated with the latest package, but the latest package has been
> installed on the system.
> 
> Although this shouldn't matter, apt seems to be breaking its own rules
> (unless I am missing something...)
> 
> My testing system:
>     Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy)
>     apt 0.7.9ubuntu17.1 for i386 compiled on Oct 27 2008 18:11:08
> 
> # dpkg -s drupal5 |grep Version
> Version: 5.12-2
> 
> # cat /etc/apt/preferences
> Package: drupal5
> Pin: release o=turnkeylinux
> Pin-Priority: 999
> 
> Note: the pin-priority can be anything larger than 99 to reproduce this,
> and the same situation happens with other packages.
> 
> # apt-cache policy drupal5
> drupal5:
>   Installed: 5.12-2
>   Candidate: 5.10-3
>   Package pin: 5.10-3
>   Version table:
>  *** 5.12-2 999
>         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>      5.10-3 999
>         500 http://archive.turnkeylinux.org hardy-security/universe Packages
>      5.7-1ubuntu1.1 999
>         500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security/universe Packages
> 
> # apt-get install drupal5
> ...
> The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
>   drupal5
> 
> In other words, the installed version is 5.12-2 but apt wants to
> downgrade to the eariler version 5.10-3.
> 
> Is this a bug in apt, a bug in the documentation, or am I
> mis-understanding something?

Is that the full of your apt preferences? Policy is reporting you've pinned the 
package by version.

Can you pastebin your full preferences file, and the output of apt-config dump?


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