How to exclude a package from being updated on Linux
Sometimes you prefer not to update a specific package in Linux. This may be because you don’t want to upgrade to a new version with new features but no security updates. Or maybe because upgrading requires a service restart that you want to avoid just yet. This was the case for me recently when a new version of Docker came up and upgrading would have restarted the docker daemon and stopped the running containers.
It is possible to exclude a package from being updated. On Linux RPM systems (RedHat, CentOS, Fedora, etc.) this is the command to install all updates but exclude a specific package (say docker):
sudo yum update --exclude=docker
On Debian-like systems (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) it is slightly more convoluted because you need to hold a package first and then upgrade the system:
sudo apt-mark hold docker && sudo apt-get upgrade
and remember to remove the hold when you’re ready to upgrade that package too:
sudo apt-mark unhold docker
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