[Fixed] "following packages have been kept back" Error in Ubuntu - eviltoast
Seeing "The following packages have been kept back" Error while updating your system? Here's how to handle this error in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

I’m on Debian 12. I did an upgrade today and got a message that pipewire-audio had been kept back. A few weeks ago I did a:

sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports pipewire

Which pulled in the newer version of pipewire so I could resolve an issue.

So I searched for ‘apt kept back’ and found the above article. I wanted to share it for anyone else in the future hitting something like this.

My solution is just to do nothing. Debian 13 should only be a few months away at this point and when I attempt to run an update only for pipewire-audio it indicates that I need to update wireplumber. I don’t really want to go down the dependency hole at this time, so just going to let it chill.

  • who@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    Yeah the whole reason for packages being kept back is because they are rolling them out slowly

    That’s an Ubuntu extension to APT. I don’t think Debian adopted it, and even if they had, this particular “kept back” message probably comes from a different mechanism.

    EDIT: OP is trying to install a backport of a package with a version-specific dependency; I’ll address that situation in a top-level comment.

    • Cyborganism@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      I dunno. Sounds like a repo-specific thing. OP is on Debian 12 and what I’m understanding is they’re also seeing this message for a third party repo.