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How to use old Debian repository for unmaintained Debian versions

Debian
Operating System Debian X
Website Debian Website

Introduction

Installing old Debian to prepare a migration is quite good when repositories are still available. But for old unmaintained versions of Debian, we need to change some things.

This is what we're gonna look here.

Usage

For this example, we're going to take lenny version which is totally deprecated. To make repository work, we need to change the repository url by 'archives':

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# /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib
# Volatile:
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free
# Backports:
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main contrib non-free
# Previously announced security updates:
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security lenny/updates main

That's all, you can update.

Info

It works with all Debian versions

References

https://superuser.com/questions/404806/did-debian-lenny-repositories-vanish