Screwed up Ubuntu with debian packages, now what?

grayFalcon · 03-11-2007, 04:15 AM

Hello everybody!

Yesterday, I made the big mistake of running an "apt-get upgrade", forgetting that I had
deb http://ftp.debian.org sid main
in my sources.list.

The problem now is that all my devices are screwed up. Giving myself permissions for /dev/null, /dev/random and /dev/urandom was easy (they suddenly were -rw-rw---- root root :/ ), but some of my other devices are simply gone, and I'm quite lost. For example, I don't have my /dev/video0 and /dev/video1 anymore (for the webcam and the tv card). Also, my sound devices are gone - I don't remember what exactly they were called, but they are not there anymore. And that's only scratching the surface, I'm pretty sure that more such things will come up soon.

Any ideas on how I can repair this? I'd be quite happy to simply go back to the packages from Edgy Eft, if this would repair anything, but from my debian times, I remember that nothing is harder than downgrading packages... Is anybody familiar with this kind of problem?

Thanks a lot in advance everybody,
-Wojtek

grayFalcon · 03-11-2007, 06:45 AM

Ok, sorry, looks like I panicked a bit. The solution was to simply put the following into my /etc/apt/preferences:

Code:

Package: *
Pin: release a=edgy
Pin-Priority: 1100

and then run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Now everything (as far as I can see) works again

fragos · 03-11-2007, 09:26 PM

apt isn't the Ubuntu recommended upgrade method.
"gksu update-manager -c -d" is recommended and insures the correct software sources are used. apt assumes your software sources are correct.