how to install specific version of minetest?

Question

I upgraded an older Ubuntu computer to 20.04. Everything went well. But now the kids are telling me they cannot connect to their favourite minetest servers. The game complains about Protocol version mismatch. Server supports protocol versions between 24 and 32. We support protocol versions between version 37 and 39. Looking it up, I see that minetest had a big change when it went from v0.4 to v5, and newer versions are not backwards compatible.

So I found a PPA that has both older and newer versions of minetest: https://launchpad.net/~minetestdevs/+archive/ubuntu/stable

Of interest to me, it has this file: minetest_0.4.16-ppa5~ubuntu17.04.1_amd64.deb (7.2 MiB)

But...how do I install that version? I added the PPA and tried variations of this:

> sudo apt-get install minetest=0.4.16
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Version '0.4.16' for 'minetest' was not found

If I leave out the version number I do see it install the latest version from that PPA. But is there a way to force it to install an older version?

Does this answer your question? How do I install a .deb file via the command line? — N0rbert, Sep 06 '20 at 07:10
@N0rbert No, none of those work. I have the .deb file, but if I try to install it, there are missing dependencies, and when I run "apt-get install -f" to fix the missing dependencies, it then upgrades to the latest minetest. — Stéphane, Sep 06 '20 at 07:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '20 at 08:24

Then let's download 0.4.16 from official bionic repository by commands below

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/leveldb/libleveldb1v5_1.20-2_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install ./libleveldb1v5_1.20-2_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/m/minetest/minetest-data_0.4.16+repack-4_all.deb
sudo apt-get install ./minetest-data_0.4.16+repack-4_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/m/minetest/minetest_0.4.16+repack-4_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install ./minetest_0.4.16+repack-4_amd64.deb

and pin/lock their versions by single long command:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/pin-minetest
Package: minetest-data
Pin: version 0.4.16+repack-4
Pin-Priority: 1337
Package: minetest
Pin: version 0.4.16+repack-4
Pin-Priority: 1337
EOF

to prevent their upgrade.

that is awesome! Cannot wait to show the kids tomorrow morning. This is exactly what I was hoping would be possible. Thanks. — Stéphane, Sep 08 '20 at 07:13

how to install specific version of minetest?

1 Answers1