How to install older version on PostgreSQL and PHP5?

Question

Because of differencies in package versions between my development machine and my provider's server, I have to downgrade packages installed on my computer. In Ubuntu 10.04 LTS default PostgreSQL version is 8.4, but I need 8.3. When I try to install postgresql-8.3 I get error:

Package postgresql-8.3 is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source E: Package postgresql-8.3 has no installation candidate

So, my first question is: How do I install PostgreSQL 8.3 in Ubuntu 10.04.

And the second question: how do I install PHP 5.2.6, or at least 5.2 in Ubuntu 10.04 (where default version is 5.3.2)?

Answer 1

Well, if you really want to keep your development and production environments in sync, you may want to consider just using a virtual machine of some kind. That way you can make it EXACTLY like production, without needing to screw up anything on your workstation.

That being said, though, you might try checkinstall. I've never used it, but the idea is to grab the sources of the version you want, configure and compile them as usual, and then use the program to make a DEB package to install.

There's also the idea of grabbing the source package from your server environment's version, and recompiling it on your machine with debuild -us -uc -b.