How to Restore guarddog in Ubuntu Natty 11.04

Canonical has a very ugly habit of removing from repositories applications that you use and love, but they think these are not “canonical”.

For example:

• gnome-app-center — gone in Ubuntu Lucid 10.04, in favor of Ubuntu Software Center
• Bitstream Vera — gone in Ubuntu Karmic 09.10, in favor of Ubuntu Font

Now, if you upgrade to Ubuntu Natty 11.04 you will notice that the following packages are gone:

• guarddog — IMHO the best GUI for firewall configuration
• guidedog — I use this to setup routing and IP masquerading
• keep — I use this to configure rdiff-backup visually

Below is the method I use to install packages present in old Ubuntu releases but missing in new releases:

1. Go to http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/
2. Locate required package directory
   i.e. for guarddog it would be
   http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/guarddog/
3. Pick most recent version of the package
   i.e. for guarddog it would be guarddog_2.6.0-2.1ubuntu3_amd64.deb — most likely this is the version used in previous release
4. Download and install deb file using GDebi
5. If package is not requiring dependencies that conflict w/ current release, it will install and work ok

This way I have successfully restored guarddog and guidedog in Ubuntu Natty 11.04.

However, keep is not starting, I guess because of some dependencies that are not satisfied… UPDATE: keep works ok now, I guess there was some bug in Natty that is fixed now.