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Sean
Asked: 2017-04-22 10:58:20 +0800 CST

Can't downgrade to the version I just upgraded from

  • 772

This morning a regular software update brought in an update to Firefox that broke some important functionality in an app I run on top of it (with firefox -app). I checked my upgrade history and found that the previous version of Firefox was 52.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1, installed on April 1. So I tried:

~$ sudo aptitude install firefox=52.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
Unable to find a version "52.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1" for the package "firefox"

And then just:

~$ sudo aptitude install firefox=52.0.2
Unable to find a version "52.0.2" for the package "firefox"

Is a package version less than a month old really out of reach, or is there some way to get it?

apt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you run:

    aptitude versions ^firefox$

    You will get:

    pi  45.0.2+build1-0ubuntu1         codename                              500 
id  53.0+build6-0ubuntu0.16.04.1   codename-security,code-name-updates   500

    You can also use something like:

    apt list -a firefox

    To get available version for install.

    Listing... Done
firefox/release-updates,release-security,now 53.0+build6-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 amd64 [installed]
firefox/release 45.0.2+build1-0ubuntu1 amd64

    The idea is that in release-updates only the last version of a software is available for installation.

    You can either install a software from release which is the start point and frozen (in our case is 45.0.2), or from release-updates/security which last version (53.0) is there.

    If you want to install Firefox 52, you can download it from here, or have access to all versions from here.

    You can also check the cache:

    ls -l /var/cache/apt/archives/firefox*

    If you didn't used something like apt autoclean or apt clean there should be at least previous version of firefox deb package:

    /var/cache/apt/archives/firefox_52.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/firefox_53.0+build6-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb

    Then first unistall the current version of firefox and after that use dpkg or gdebi to install the downloaded deb file:

    sudo dpkg -i firefox-version.deb

    or

    sudo gdebi firefox-version.deb

    Remember that you can always use apt-mark hold to prevent a package from updating:

    sudo apt-mark hold firefox
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  2. You can run the following to see the available versions of firefox:

    apt-cache showpkg firefox

    Then install an older version by running

    sudo apt-get install firefox=version

    For example, when I run the first command, I get the following output:

    Package: firefox
Versions: 
53.0+build6-0ubuntu0.17.04.1 (/var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty-updates_main_binary-amd64_Packages) (/var/lib/apt/lists/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty-security_main_binary-amd64_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_binary-amd64_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_binary-i386_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: en
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_i18n_Translation-en
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty-updates_main_binary-amd64_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55

50.1.0+build2-0ubuntu1 (/var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_binary-amd64_Packages)
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_binary-amd64_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_binary-i386_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: en
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_i18n_Translation-en
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty-updates_main_binary-amd64_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55
 Description Language: 
                 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_zesty-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages
                  MD5: 46b619f510631c4693dc09c1a3778a55

    ... and a bunch of other stuff about dependencies.

    So I can downgrade firefox using:

    sudo apt-get install firefox=50.1.0+build2-0ubuntu1
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