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Having installed an experimental version of dropbox and installed in manually, i dont want the deb in synaptic to download any updates (as theyll over write the changes ive done manually i assume).

Ive found the lock version option in synaptic, im assuming this stops a particular deb from downloading any new versions of itself?

Also can i just unlock it again when the version from the deb catches up with the experimental version that i have installed?

Am i correct or does it serve another function?

Mechanical snail
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richzilla
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2 Answers2

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apt will only replace the current package of something if there is a newer package. Updates that come now will likely be to previous versions. It won't downgrade it unless they do something spectacularly silly with the versioning.

Lock version is not as clever as it sounds. It's supposed to do what it says on the tin, lock the version... But it only locks it within Synaptic. Anything else that does package upgrades (read: Update Manager, apt-get, aptitude, etc) ignores this. This is probably buggy behaviour so I would expect this to be fixed in time.

But to stop things getting upgraded, you want to "hold" it. To do that, load up aptitude, find the package (/ is the quick-key for searching, n finds the next instance) and press h on it to hold it. This is respected a lot more than Synaptic's "lock" feature.

Edit: Another way of doing this via the command line is by running this:

sudo -i
echo <package-name> hold | dpkg --set-selections

But as I started with, I don't think you need to do this in your circumstances. Provided you're using a package version that is clearly newer than the current stable releases (and isn't just a random build number - you can see in Synaptic) you'll be fine.

Oli
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  • i havent installed the latest version via a deb, i just unpacked it and put the folders where they were supposed to go. So my deb still shows 0.6.5, but the version im actually running is 0.8.11. I dont mind manually looking after dropbox for the time being, and then just unlocking (or unholding as you suggest) the deb when the stable version catches up? – richzilla Oct 26 '10 at 14:44
  • In that case, just remove the package. You might need to re-extract your version but you won't get any bother from apt again. Or find a repository that stocks the latest beta versions. – Oli Oct 26 '10 at 14:48
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    Be aware richzilla... dropbox-nautilus is 0.6.5, I mean the client, what you've downloaded from dropbox forum is another think, so you don't need to lock dropbox-nautilus in synaptic. When you update client you change files in .dropbox folder in Home and not .dropbox-dist folder. For example now you're running dropbox 0.8.110 and dropbox-nautilus 0.6.5. – skalka Oct 26 '10 at 14:56
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It locks your program to the version that you are using... So that means no updates, bug fixes or upgrades to whatever programs you lock.... This is kind of like ignoring updates in Windows, or I guess you could even ignore them in Ubuntu if you wish... But this allows you to ignore updates for one or two programs, and allow updates for everything else.

TheXed
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