In redhat-based distros, the yum tool has a distro-sync command which will synchronize packages to the current repositories. This command is useful for returning to a base state if base packages have been modified from an outside source. The docs for the command is:
distribution-synchronization or distro-sync Synchronizes the installed package set with the latest packages available, this is done by either obsoleting, upgrading or downgrading as appropriate. This will "normally" do the same thing as the upgrade command however if you have the package FOO installed at version 4, and the latest available is only version 3, then this command will downgrade FOO to version 3.
Is there an equivalent operation in Ubuntu?