find all installed packages from a specific release

[kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com>]

How do I find packages installed on my machine that belong to a specific Debian release?

In my case, I have the following entries in my sources.list

rajulocal@hogwarts:~$ stuff.pl /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

Now, I want to retire the squeeze mirror. But before I do that I'd like to find all the packages installed on my machine from this mirror. Then I can decide whether I want to upgrade or delete or keep then as-is. Is there a way to find that out?

Also, in the KDE panel, I get a notification such as

You should update your system.

There are 1,612 updates,

and 7 security updates.

In this case, I just want to perform the 7 security updates but do not want to update all the 1612 updates. Is there any way to pick and choose?

I guess one way to comment out the non-security mirrors in the sources.list and do upgrade. But I am wondering if there is a better approach?

thanks
raju

--

Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/