How can i prevent an upgrade from removing packages?

[DylanRush]

I was going to upgrade to 11.10 today from 11.04. It goes through and calculates the changes. I look to see what it is going to remove and find that it is going to remove the drivers for my printer. This wouldn't be a big problem if there were 64 bit drivers for my printer. I had to fool around trying to figure out how to force the architecture and get my printer and scanner working. I don't really feel like having to go through this again so I wanted to know if I can prevent the upgrade from removing these drivers or not.

[garvinrick4]

aptitude hold pkgname: Fix a package at its current version and don't upgrade it automatically (formerly an obscure echo-to-file command). unhold to remove the hold.
You would have to install "aptitude" package. This is to hold a package and not upgrade.
Have held a package before but when you say messed with your architecture using 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit system seems something you might have written down. Anyway that
is all I got, on how to hold a package.
Your Debian Aptitude | GarfieldTech (http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/your-debian-aptitude)

[DylanRush]

You would have to install "aptitude" package. This is to hold a package and not upgrade.


So your saying I would be able to hold two packages through an entire distro upgrade?


...when you say messed with your architecture using 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit system seems something you might have written down.


and unfortunately, I haven't written down how to do it. In retrospect, I probably should have.