[13:34] <maru> Hi all. I'm building an emulated environment for cyber security research. In particular, I have a thorough inventory of all applications (with versions) to be installed on a huge number of vms (mostly Ubuntu). I initially resorted to “vanilla” ansible but the problem is with old/superseded versions of packages. In the journey I discovered the fabulous launchpad API, hence the question: can I obtain a package .deb by specifying name
[13:34] <maru> and version (e.g., openssh 5.9p1) even if superseded/not in the installed OS ppa?
[15:47] <cjwatson> maru: Maybe in some cases; not in general and not via apt.  If the files in question haven't been entirely purged then it would be possible to copy them (without rebuilding) into a PPA and then pin that PPA using apt.  Your question isn't quite specific enough for us to know whether that's possible in this case.
[15:56] <maru> unfortunately we are talking about many different packages. My objective is having a fully automated "best-effort" solution that hopefully works on most cases (I am currently looking at: https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/660750 which looks promising)
[15:58] <cjwatson> many different packages isn't interesting.  many different source *archives* would be interesting
[15:59] <maru> why?
[15:59] <cjwatson> are you trying to obtain these packages in the sense of downloading them locally, or in the sense of getting them all into a single PPA that you can provision on one of the relevant systems?
[15:59] <cjwatson> (or rather, on many of the relevant systems)
[15:59] <cjwatson> and are they superseded from the primary Ubuntu archive, or from some random PPA?
[16:00] <cjwatson> (you said "the installed OS ppa", which doesn't totally make sense because the primary Ubuntu archive isn't a PPA)
[16:03] <maru> On download locally vs ppa: both directions would work in my case, as I have to download and install them on each machine. The second approach would imply building a centralized archive that then could be used as source on all machines (and updated if needed), while the second I guess would be easier/more flexible
[16:04] <maru> superseded from the primary ubuntu archive
[16:05] <maru> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/5.5.54-0ubuntu0.14.04.1/+publishinghistory this is a notable example
[17:05] <maru> also, is anyone aware of an NVT CPE mapping to actual packages?