Michael Lowman's questions

I changed my mind some time after install, and would prefer stable to testing for this particular system. Unfortunately, I currently have packages at old testing versions. I need to force a downgrade to get them back on the squeeze track while keeping one or two (plus dependencies) at testing versions. Sadly my preferences file isn't playing well with others. I've tried many variations on version n=, version a=, etc.

bash# cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/pinstable
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: -10

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 1010

I have the default release set to stable:

bash# cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt.conf.d/99release
APT::Default-Release "stable";

Here's an example using a random package that has a few possible versions:

bash# apt-cache policy libapache2-mod-php5
libapache2-mod-php5:
  Installed: 5.3.6-13
  Candidate: 5.3.6-13
  Version table:
     5.3.9-1 0
        -10 http://mirror.rit.edu/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
 *** 5.3.6-13 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     5.3.3-7+squeeze7 0
        990 http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates/main i386 Packages
     5.3.3-7+squeeze3 0
        990 http://mirror.rit.edu/debian/ squeeze/main i386 Packages

Why aren't the squeeze versions at priority 1010?

When I do large compilations (anywhere, but my question assumes Linux), many messages are often output to the screen. My question is, do these messages slow down the process? And if they do, does switching to a different tty so they aren't displayed to the screen reduce the performance hit?

So I'm setting up a small network with all the standard stuff (files, email, etc.) and I've decided to go with a Kerberos+LDAP solution. Any ideas or recommendations on Heimdal vs. MIT?

I've used MIT before, and tangentially Heimdal, but I don't really know of any real reason for using one over the other. I just know that I'd prefer not to realize I'd rather be running MIT after getting the whole Heimdal up and running with a full user database.

If any other info'd be useful, I'm happy to provide.