Revert PHP 5.3 to 5.2 (better compatibility with Drupal 6)

Let us list all existing PHP packages to know what version we are running:

# dpkg -l | grep php

So, now we are going to duplicate the existing sources.list and replace the lucid with karmic repos and saving it in sources.list.d

# sed s/lucid/karmic/g /etc/apt/sources.list | \ 
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/karmic.list

Create a file to be a little bit ahead of our apt-get system.

# sudo vim /etc/apt/preferences.d/php

And insert the following text

Package: php5
Pin: release a=karmic
Pin-Priority: 991

Let's update the system. (You might want to do it twice to be sure)

#sudo apt-get update

Install:

# sudo apt-get install php5=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 php5-dev=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 
php-pear=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 php5-cgi=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 
php5-cli=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 php5-common=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 
php5-curl=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 php5-gd=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 php5-mysql=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 
php5-pgsql=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 libapache2-mod-php5=5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6

sirleech/gist:1786544

References