The version of Debian installed on Spry's VPSes is
stable. This OS is great, but the stability policy of Debian makes that some newer packages are not available for
stable, while they are for
testing.
Upgrading the distribution to
testing is not recommended and could break your
VPS.
The solution for keeping
stable and installing the package is to modify apt-get configuration to setup what is called a
mixed system:
-create or modify the
/etc/apt/apt.conf file and make it contain the following line:
Code:
APT::Default-Release "stable";
-modify the
/etc/apt/sources.list file: copy all the lines containing
stable, insert them at the end of the file, and replace the
stable in the lines you just added by
testing. You must have all the original lines in the files plus all the lines where
stable has been replaced by
testing.
-run
apt-get update to update the list of installable packages.
-if you want to install the package
foo that is present in the testing sources, use the following command:
Code:
apt-get -t testing install foo
Be very careful about which packages you install from
testing. By definition they are not as stable as the packages found in the
stable distribution.