Hello Bob,
OK, not running Debian (/me on *buntu, actually Mint 12 but that is 
pretty much 11.10), but I did exactly what you want to do. I feel your 
pain, Gentoo made this a lot easier. The portage system is just so much 
easier to manipulate.
Anyhow, I managed to grok a way to do this on MintBuntu. In principle it 
should be similar enough to Debian, so here is what I did -
  * Pinned all my kernel packages by adding the following fragment to 
the bottom my /etc/apt/preferences file:
---start---
Package: linux-firmware
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -10
Package: linux-generic
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -10
Package: linux-image-*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -10
Package: linux-headers-*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -10
Package: linux-libc-dev
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -10
---end---
Note: You will have to research the "Pin" entry a bit to ensure that you 
put something sensible in there for Debian.
* Then I downloaded the 3.1.5 kernel sources from kernel.org,
* made sure that the source is in /usr/src/linux-3.1.5,
* created a kernel config (see [1])
* did a "make all ; make modules_install ; make install"
* made sure that "make install" inserted the right bits in my grub.conf
* rebooted! :-)
The pinning ensures that I can now update the system without having to 
be scared that my kernel will get clobbered.
Footnote [1]:
As with building your kernel source on Gentoo, you will have to start 
the process with a kernel config. I simply copied my 3.0.0-13 running 
kernel config from "/boot/config-3.0.0-13-generic" to 
"/usr/src/linux-3.1.5/.config", and rebuilt the config with a "make 
oldconfig" before I started the "make all" bits. Since a lot of things 
have changed from 3.0.0 to 3.1.5, "make oldconfig"  will ask you what to 
do for all the newer kernel options. In this particular case I simply 
accepted the defaults, which seems to work for me. Incidentally I tried 
the same for kernel 3.2-rc5, but my wireless is not working (I probably 
need to reconfigure the kernel again with "make menuconfig" and rebuild 
it).
Also one last tip: make sure you edit the kernel source Makefile and add 
your bit to the "EXTRAVERSION" line. Mine looks like this:
---start---
VERSION = 3
PATCHLEVEL = 1
SUBLEVEL = 5
EXTRAVERSION = -jh1
NAME = "Divemaster Edition"
---end---
Let me know if you want my 3.1.5 kernel config file, and I will mail it 
to you.
Hope this helps! :-)
On 16/12/11 15:57, hantslug@??? wrote:
> On Friday 16 December 2011 15:33:54 Bob Dunlop wrote:
>> Is there a way to upgrade a single package?  On Gentoo this is trivially
>> easy.
> Have you tried Squeeze backports, Bob?
>
> http://backports-master.debian.org/Instructions/
>
> It works great for any packages that are there.  I did search for a 3.x
> kernel, using various terms and couldn't find one.  If the kernel you want is
> in Wheezy, I am surprised if it is not in backports and my search abilitites
> fade with my eyesight.
> But you can, by pinning, use just named packages form Wheezy.  I have not
> tried this and can therefore not tell you how, but it seems to be eminently
> doable by the competant!
>
> The Debian users list would be a good place to ask.  There are some real
> experts on pinning there.  But tell them what you want to achieve.  There may
> be a more debianised way of doing it.
>
> http://lists.debian.org/
>
> HTH
> Lisi
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@???
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Regards,
Jan Henkins
--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface: 
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL: 
http://www.hantslug.org.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------