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-   -   Downgrade from current to 14 (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/downgrade-from-current-to-14-a-4175465652/)

greggerz 06-11-2013 11:04 PM

Downgrade from current to 14
 
I saw a post about doing this from 2004 and wondered if the answer is still the same: the only way to go back to Slackware 14 is to do a fresh install.

perbh 06-11-2013 11:26 PM

he he - did 'current' beat your posterior?

Answer is - I don't really know, but it sure would be a lot easier just to install from scratch again.
I have had the experience allready, and quite honestly, to install Slackware from scratch is about the easiest thing in the wild-west of distros.

TobiSGD 06-11-2013 11:55 PM

I had to do this on my laptop due to missing driver support from AMD.
IIRC, do it this way:
1. Make sure that you have set DOWNLOAD_ALL to on in your slackpkg.conf
2. Set your mirror to a 14.0 repository
3.
Code:

slackpkg update
slackpkg reinstall slackware
slackpkg clean-system

You have to replace slackware with slackware64 in the second slackpkg command when you run a 64 bit installation.
At the time I had to do this -current was not so far away from 14.0, so it may be possible that it doesn't work anymore.

Mark Pettit 06-12-2013 05:20 AM

No matter which way you do this, it won't be pretty. I'd make sure I had a good backup (or 2) first. Even so, I'd have to have a damn good reason to be even contemplating it.

hitest 06-12-2013 06:12 AM

Further to TobiSGD's excellent post. Downgrading may work, but 14.0 and the upcoming 14.1 are very far apart now (I have no idea if this will work). As mentioned prior to attempting a downgrade ensure that you back-up everything that you cannot afford to lose. If the downgrade fails you can always do a clean install of 14.0 and bring over your stuff from the back-up.

tronayne 06-12-2013 06:42 AM

This sort of situation is where partitioning comes in handy.

When you think about it, your stuff goes in /home, /usr/local, /opt, /var/lib/mysql, /var/lib/psql, /var/lib/virtual, maybe a couple of other places. Everything else goes in root; i.e., everything that's on the distribution CD-ROM/DVD goes in root. So, I create partitions for each of those; in some cases they're separate drives altogether -- my data base servers are separate drives, but on my working systems they're partitions on the system drive. In either case, they "look" the same when mounted.

I always do a clean install when a new Slackware release comes along. First, I copy /etc to one of the partitions. Then I stick the DVD in and go through set up. I format the root partition (so it's "clean") but do not format the partitions that will be mounted (you choose not to format during set up when you're adding partitions to /etc/fstab).

Once the installation is complete, I copy or merge some configuration files in /etc from the backed up copy. You know, things like /etc/ntp.conf, /etc/fonts/local.conf (I keep font files in /usr/local/share/fonts -- I have Adobe Type Libary (large!) plus other add-on fonts). All that sort of fine tuning.

The net result is that an install takes about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes. Software installed in /opt is still there (like LibreOffice plus a lot of GIS, Google-Earth), the data bases are there, virtual machines are there (I do have to run Win7 every patch Tuesday, you know).

All you have to do is remember which partition is what (and df -h or mount will tell you that before you start) and don't format them during installation (well, you do want to format the root partition) -- I'm not kidding, 20 or so minutes from start to up and running.

You may, if you use a lot of SlackBuilds.org packages, need to make your root "large;" they seem to want to be installed in the root tree (I prefer that anything I add go in /usr/local but, OK, deal with it and make the root tree 20G instead of 10G, dammit).

Works for me, might just work for you when you need to go back to square one.

Hope this helps some.

greggerz 06-12-2013 09:20 AM

Thank you everyone, I'll make a backup and see how things go.

zrdc28 06-16-2013 06:42 PM

I actually did what you want to do, I upgraded my wife's to current, and when I checked it with "slackpkg update" it had
written a new mirror. I accidentally marked a Slackpkg mirror to 14 instead of current and proceeded to update/upgrade,
well it upgraded/downgraded me back to 14 with no problems. She used it for a couple of weeks before
I took it back to current.


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