I've recently learned that you can configure both yum and rpm to save copies of their previous configurations so that changes can be undone or rolled back if the updates cause an unexpected problem.

For yum, you add the line tsflags=repackage to the /etc/yum.conf file.

For rpm, add the line %_repackage_all_erasures 1 to /etc/rpm/macros file. (You may have to create /etc/rpm/macros if it doesn't exist already.)

I've never used these before and want to learn more about how flexible they are. In particular, if you run a general-purpose 'yum update' and one of the installed/updated RPM's creates a problem, can you roll back just the package that caused the problem? ...or do you have to remove all of them and then go reinstall the things that didn't cause problems?

If it makes a difference, I'm running various incarnations of Fedora; mostly 6, 7, & 8.

Thanks all,
WN

I'm not going to answer your question. Not out of malice but because you can do that yourself. You've clearly read up on it so you've got all the nfo you need. (Besides that you've been here long enough to know the horror stories about making no backups.) Find yourself an RPM of some small utility with two versions. Install the lower version. Update to the newer package with "--repackage" (so you don't have to touch the macros file). Now try to roll back.

* As for http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...pdates-603109/ I'd suggest editing the post and posting the method anyway. Sounds interesting.