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Introduction
You are running Debian stable, because you prefer the stable Debian
tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little
bit outdated compared to other distributions. That is where backports come
in.
Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable
(in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), so they will run without new
libraries (wherever it is possible) on a stable Debian distribution. I
recommend you to pick out single backports which fits your needs, and not
to use all backports available here.
-- Norbert Tretkowski aka nobse
Latest News
Sun, 06 Aug 2006 10:55 GMT
Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:56 GMT
Rene Engelhard uploaded openoffice.org 2.0.3 to
backports.org last week. The update fixes
some security issues, was moved to contrib, and includes the help files. For details
see Renes
mail
to the backports-users mailinglist.
Fri, 05 May 2006 15:03 GMT
Usually I'll wait for an updated package in testing/unstable to fix bugs which
also affects packages on backports.org.
Now the time has come, where this is no longer possible for a package:
xorg-x11. Why? We
have 6.9 in testing (and on backports.org), and 7.0 in
unstable. We'll see no more updates for the packages in testing, and
backporting xorg-x11 7.0 to sarge is a pain in the ass. So we need to stick with 6.9 at
least for a while, which primary means we can't just take a newer package from
testing/unstable to fix (security related) bugs.
Yesterday I
uploaded
xorg-x11 6.9.0.dfsg.1-5bpo2, which fixes CVE-2006-1526,
a problem which led to a buffer overflow. A local attacker could exploit this
to crash the X server or even execute arbitrary code with root privileges. The
patch was taken from Ubuntu's security
update.
Thu, 04 May 2006 12:53 GMT
I just uploaded
firefox 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.3-0bpo1
to backports.org
this morning, because it fixed an important security related bug (see
#364810). And boom... a few hours
later, bug #365960 was filed. Of course, the
backport is affected too. So, think twice before upgrading the firefox backport, I'm sure
Eric Dorland and/or
Mike Hommey (who are doing a great job maintaining
a monster like firefox) are going to fix this in unstable soon.
Update: 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.3-2 was uploaded to unstable, and the backport is already updated.
Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:39 GMT
Tue, 07 Mar 2006 18:36 GMT
Mickael Marchand noticed a problem with the
mysql-dfsg backport
on amd64. I don't own such hardware, but fortunately Christian Hammers was
able to reproduce that problem, which seems not to be Debian related, so he filed a
bugreport to the MySQL bug tracking
system.
Sun, 29 Jan 2006 10:55 GMT
We have a mailinglist, please
use it when you have questions about some backports. I'm not responsible for all packages on
backports.org, and can't help with every single problem.
Most people uploading packages are reading this list.
Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:33 GMT
Mon, 19 Dec 2005 20:17 GMT
Please stop mailing me about the "broken" or "missing" /pending/ directory on
backports.org. It's gone, and will
never come back. That was a temporary solution, all packages from there were
moved into the regular archive a few days ago.
Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:40 GMT
It's done, backports.org switched to
sarge. Thanks to Joerg Jaspert, dak is up
and running, and Debian developers can upload their own backports. Please see
the details
for developers I wrote to our mailinglist. If you just want to use some
packages, take a look at the
instructions
for users from the website. There are still some parts missing, e.g. the
website needs some updates, we need a wanna-build, buildds and new mirrors. I hope we'll find time for those next weekend.
There's also an IRC channel for interested developers/users on
OFTC called #debian-backports. The old archive with woody backports is
still available, but no longer supported.
Update: If you're currently running a mirror, please wait for a blog entry from Joerg
on Planet Debian,
we're switching to push mirroring next weekend.
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 11:47 GMT
Rene Engelhard, one of Debians
openoffice.org maintainers,
built a backport of openoffice.org 2.0.0-2 for sarge. It's available from
here, and of
course you can install it using apt, just add this line to your sources.list:
deb http://www.backports.org/pending/openoffice.org/ ./
Speaking of backports for sarge... Joerg Jaspert
continued his work on
the dak setup for backports.org, I'm confident that it's finished soon, so
Debian developers can upload their own packages to backports.org.
Update: The above sources.list line no longer works! Please see the
newer news entries!
Fri, 23 Sep 2005 19:36 GMT
I have some backports for sarge ready, which are waiting for the final DAK
setup I have to do with Joerg Jaspert.
You can grab them from the /pending
directory on backports.org. Amongst others
there are apt 0.6.41, mozilla-firefox 1.0.7, postfix 2.2.4, subversion 1.2.3 and
xorg-x11 6.8.2. I really hope we'll find some time soon to finish everything to get
the sarge section on backports.org ready.
Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:09 GMT
David Nusinow uploaded
xorg-x11
6.8.2.dfsg.1-5 to unstable a few days ago, so I updated the
backport for sarge to 6.8.2.dfsg.1-4sarge1, based on the new version in
unstable.
Take a look at this older blog entry for
instructions how to use it.
Sat, 30 Jul 2005 06:51 GMT
I got a few mails, asking me about an updated
xfree86-driver-synaptics driver for the
xorg-x11 backport. I promised to upload it as soon as an updated package
hits unstable, and it's now available at the usual place:
deb http://people.debian.org/~nobse/xorg-x11/ sarge main
In the meantime, the backport of xorg-x11 was also updated to
6.8.2.dfsg.1-3sarge1, which is based on 6.8.2.dfsg.1-4 from unstable.
Thu, 14 Jul 2005 06:31 GMT
I updated my backport
of xorg-x11, it's now based on the latest and greatest version 6.8.2.dfsg.1-2, which was uploaded to
unstable last night. If you want to use it, add this line to your sources.list:
deb http://people.debian.org/~nobse/xorg-x11/ sarge main
As usual, please don't file bugreports against these packages to the Debian Bug Tracking
Systems, instead contact me or the
debian-x mailinglist.
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