Rollback

RPM rollbacks

Configuring the System to save rollback information

1. Configure yum to save rollback information.

Add the line

tsflags=repackage*

to /etc/yum.conf.

2. Configure command-line rpm to save rollback information:

Add the line:

%_repackage_all_erasures 1

to /etc/rpm/macros.

Using rollbacks

Back out an updates, which you can do with either rollback, or oldpackages

Method 1:

To rollback to a previous state, perform an rpm update with the --rollback option followed by a date/time specifier.

Examples:

rpm -Uhv --rollback '9:00 am'

rpm -Uhv --rollback '4 hours ago'

rpm -Uhv --rollback 'december 25'.

Method 2:

Use the "oldpackage" option to manually force a specific RPM:

rpm -Uvh --oldpackage foo-1-1.i386.rpm

Keep in mind this will only let you rollback what can be rolled back. Some OS updates are not reversible, for example, if you did an upgrade of mysql that changed your tables you would not be able to roll back this way.

Yum Rollbacks

Yum has a command "downgrade" that can be used to downgrade or rollback and installation or upgrade. "downgrade" is very easy to use if the package does not have any dependencies which effect the downgrade.

To rollback a single package, use this command:

 yum downgrade package

"yum downgrade" does not resolve dependencies automatically, which means if you have dependencies, you will have to do this manually. Example:

 yum downgrade foo

 Setting up Downgrade Process
 Resolving Dependencies
 --> Running transaction check
 ---> Package foo.i686 0:1.1.11-1.fc13 set to be downgraded
 ---> Package foo.i686 0:1.1.11-1.fc14 set to be erased
 Error: Package: foo-devel-3.6.23-1.fc14.i686 (@rawhide/12)
 Requires: foo = 1.1.11-1.fc14
 Removing: foo-1.1.11-1.fc14.i686 (@rawhide/12)
 foo = 1.1.11-1.fc14
 Downgraded By: foo-1.1.11-1.fc13.i686 (fedora)
 foo = 1.1.11-1.fc13
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem

The "foo" package depends on foo-devel package, so both foo-devel and foo have to be downgraded:

 yum downgrade foo foo-devel