rhel 5
just did a
yum update --security


now i want to back out all the updates it just did
how using yum? do i need to build a pkg list from /var/log/yum.log and do a loop with yum downgrade ? is there another way?

you can use yum history.

will show all transactions with the latest at the top of the list

use where # is the number of the transaction, to see what was done.

will undo the last transaction

will undo the fourth from last transaction

will rollback all the transactions to the fourth from last

man yum

ah, thnx. that will work.

i was stuck on yum downgrade for some reason, but i knew it was easier than yum downgrade. yum history is what i need.

i have to ask, where is yum history stored? my yum.log is already zipped via logrotate.

hmm, when did yum history get into yum?

mine is v3.2.22-39 , i see that perhaps history is not available until 3.2.25 ??

if i upgrade to 3.2.25 can i use yum history undo from stuff that was done via an older yum?

if i cant get newer yum or it wont solve this issue, can i yum downgrade each of the packages shown in the yum.log file?

as a note, i recently did a yum update yum, it points to RHN repo, and only got 3.3.22-39

Sorry, I didn't realise how far behind RHEL was/is. Apparently history in RHEL starts with RHEL6. Fedora has had it since maybe 12 or 13, which is 2 or 3 years now.
You are probably stuck with using your original plan using downgrade and your yum log.
I wouldn't advise trying to install the latest yum on RHEL5, in case it breaks something, like RHN.

i have a list of packages that were updated in yum.log, but have some questions there

some (one does) have this in front of package name "30:", what does this mean?

also, some packages have same name except for the 32bit 64bit ending, so do i list the whole name as seen in the log file?

and what dows downgrade actually do? does it back down the package to the last one before the installed version?

i run yum update --security, now i want to test backing out those changes.

and when i say latest yum, i run yum update yum but that only gets me the latest from the rhn repo, which is what i have now.

downgrading is something that is not used much

i have only had to downgrade one program ONE time -- xorg ( one time for ONE operating system )
and that was for hardware support on OLD hardware


go through the list manually
then add a bunch of "exclude = ???? ???? ???? " to the yum repo files
that why the programs you did downgrade will NOT be updated
replace the ??? with the program name

JohnVV


i have the list of packages yum update from yum.log

i need to know if a "downgrade" simply takes the package back one step or does a rollback, etc.

as example, my kernel package was say on rhel 5.6 (2.6.18-238) and then i run yum update --security. well, yum installs rhel 5.8 kernel (2.6.18-308) and skipped right over rhel v5.7 (2.6.18-274), so if i downgrade my 308 kernel packages does it downgrade back to 238 or does it step back one notch to 274?

i need to undo the updates that just happened bringing system back to the state it was prior to doing a yum update --security, etc