On Sep 7, 11:17 pm, Dirk Hartmann <blangiss_nos...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Darren Salt wrote: 
> 
> 
> 
>
> This answers my question. The difference between stable/testing/unstable
> should be clear for any Debian user (mixing it causes trouble e.g. when
> forcing apt-get -f). In my opinion Debian is build for easy administration
> of the distribution.
> Background: To have a clean Debian I use pinning (generally i use apt-get
> -ut stable to install a new program). My sources list includes only sarge
> repositories. And my /etc/apt/preferences is accommodated as follows
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=stable
> Pin-Priority: 500
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=testing
> Pin-Priority: 400
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=unstable
> Pin-Priority: 50
>
> That's why I insisted on the definition. And old stable (sarge) vs stable
> (etch) sounds reasonable. Also that one has to keep in mind in the moment
> that the latest testing version ist sid (and sarge unstable is only for
> strange experiments)

Sorry, if you pin at stable, you use Etch now, mixed with old packages
from Sarge.
This is not a good situation(tm)

There is only one Woddy, only one Sarge, only one Etch and only one
Lenny.  If you want to be in control when you go between them, you
should pin at those names, not stable, testing or unstable.  If you
pin at stable, you will always get latest stable. So when they
released Ech, you was starting to pull packages from Etch instead of
Sarge.

If those name confuse you, use debian version numbers instead.
Testing and Unstable never have version numbers.
So when Debian releases a new version, the old releases gets bumped
off.

So when Woddy was stabel, Sarge was testing.
When Sarge went stabel, Etch was new testing.  Woody's support was
dropped after some months
When Etch went stabel, Lenny is new testing.  Sarge's support is
beeing dropped in some months

So.  When a releas gets stabel, it will never change (except for
security updates).
So Sarge is no longer stabel, it's an old release that you can install
if you feal like running old software.  All distributions are
archived, and need to be some 10 years, I think (some licensies demand
this).

> Thanks for answering and good night (11.10 pm in Germany)

Hope I didn't confuse all of you to much with this...

Good luck

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