Using Debian Testing ("Stretch") packages on Jessie ARM hosts?

[KodiakFi]

Hi Folks,

In my continuing adventures in Armbian (coming from RHEL/Fedora professionally), I've discovered that Jessie uses very old packages for various things I'd like to use to get closer to a Fedora-like experience. 

 

For example, I'd really like to use https://packages.debian.org/testing/net/firewalld.

 

Any advice you could give on how to use some testing packages on Armbian?  I thought ensuring 'backports' was listed in my /etc/apt/sources.list file would do it but alas no dice.  I've tried the following command based upon this Debian wiki page:

https://wiki.debian.org/Backports#Installing_backports_on_the_command_line

# aptitude -t jessie-backports install firewalld
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 43 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.

[zador.blood.stained]

Debian backports repository component contains limited number of packages. To install newer packages from testing repository you need to add Stretch repository entries to apt sources lists and use so-called apt pinning to keep all other packages untouched. You may want to read this topic and some documentation (i.e this) to get this done. Don't forget to make backups before experimenting!

 

Alternatively you could dist-upgrade Jessie to Stretch, if you are confident in your ability of solving potential issues that may happen due to packages migration.

 

BTW, by looking at firewalld page that you linked you can tell that this package is not present in backports repository: look at the top right corner for distribution switching links and compare, for example, with systemd page.

[KodiakFi]

Thanks a bunch for the reply.  After doinking around for a bit with all of this I'm wondering if the best route isn't to just try to upgrade my cubox and odroid C2s all to stretch.  I'm sure old versions of NetworkManager and FirewallD are only the beginning of the dusty old stuff I encounter on Jessie. 

 

Thanks again!