How to make APT search for older packages?
 

So i have been using wine to play Starcraft 2 just about flawlessly on Linux for a few months now. When one day i upgraded to wine 4.9 and it suddenly stopped working on me.


I looked on the wine website only to find out , that it was the upgrade it self and others had the same issue.


My issue is how do i downgrade?

I used apt-cache to search for wine 4.8 and it shows up but i dont think i am getting the correct full package name.

I had the wine repo added to my sources , i would really just like to make APT search the entire repo for ALL versions. But APT only searches current versions.

Any of you guys have a solution for this. I know its simple but i already spent a few hours Googling and using help on the commands and i cant seem to find anything.

I could install it from source, but i should not have too and plus i need to know how to do something as simple as a downgrade, using package managers. Its much easier and more efficient.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

packages.debian.org

One way to get / search for older .deb's. If you haven't removed packages, they're stored in /var/cache/apt/archives/.

I just looked their after you said that, and it is no longer there.


So lets say i want to download wine 4.8 and i get the .deb from pkgs.org

If i put all the wine packages in a folder and run dpkg -i * would that do the trick?

Or should i just start building from source....?

I am still slightly confused because if the wine repository has all the previous wine versions why cant you enable it to search an older package?

Are there any package managers that enable you to search older package versions on a developers repository?

I thought the only reason apt couldn't search the entire repository was because it would flood the terminal with a stupid amount of packages.

Correct me if i am wrong?

I know the dpkg -i has a force downgrade option but than i go back to dependency hell (the real hell) if i do that.

The idea of having to download every single package part by part sounds kind of daunting.

Just seeing if there is a more effective way of doing this.

Best Regards,

When I've had to do it, I would do:

Now yes, depending on dependencies you may need to install more than just the wine binary itself, but the advantage to using apt to do so is it will TRY to solve those dependencies for you.

The dpkg -i with "all" the packages in a path would work. But you'll have dependency hell aka "ALL" the packages need to be there. It would be easier to downgrade distro versions (for me) and run everything from the "older" distro (perhaps in a chroot with shared resources). Although you might have better luck looking for a flatpak or snap of your game. If it exists, that would greatly simplify things.

I uninstalled wine 4.9 and installed 4.8 with a package from dpkgs.org after i installed it i did a --fix-broken install

it couldn't find wine-staging:i386 and it reverted back to 4.9 some how.

What does the apt-mark hold do???

That tells it to not upgrade it again after you've installed the downgraded version. So it will ignore newer versions until such a point as you remove the hold. It will also therefore not upgrade a dependency that would break the version you have installed, and prevent packages that depended upon it to upgrade if the upgrade required a newer version.

I am going to give it a try now and let you guys know what happens.


:)