How to backout Slackware upgrades?
 

Hello :)

Is it possible to backout Slackware upgrades?

After the last upgrade, VirtualBox VMs will not start.

Best

Charles

you want to keep a mirror of Slackware. then use the upgrade text to revert. But if running current and want to go back to stable 13.1 then change your /etc/slackpkg/mirrors file to 13.1 and run slackpkg update then slackpkg upgrade-all then slackpkg install-new slackpkg clean-system this will get rid of all the packages that is not part of the distro.
remember clean get rid of everything even sbopkgs.
there is know reason for 13.1 not to start from what I see. if running current oh yes there is plenty of reasons.

Thanks Drakeo :)

Sorry -- should have said this is not -current.

I can't find any reason either but it doesn't work and rolling back the recent upgrade might help get a handle on the problem.

Saw this on my box, and just downloading the latest Vbox from the website cured the problem, and running current here so it should work on standard 13.1.

Thanks for that vdemuth :) I will try the current VirtualBox version soon.

Is the VBox kernel module loaded?

I second the idea that it is an installation issue. The changes you reference in your other thread were from the end of October, and since then I've switched from VMware to Vbox using the Slackbuilds.org slackbuilds and I'm not having any trouble with my virtual machines.

That fixed it :)

They were according to /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv status (accidentally omitted from other thread).

Thanks Hangdog42 :)

I'm still curious to know if it is possible to back out Slackware upgrades ...

I think it is just a matter of re-installing the older packages. If I remember correctly, installlpkg doesn't do any sort of version checking, so "upgrading" with an older package removes the newer one and installs the older one.

Of course you do need an accurate list of what was upgraded in the first place and access to the older packages.

Thanks Hangdog42 :) I always log the new packages but am less confident of having a record of what the previous packages were or of having the older packages. Would be neat to be able to roll back though; have added it to the TODO list.

I use slackpkg for my updates and run it with DELALL=off in /etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf. After an update I do 'mv /var/cache/packages /var/cache/packages<date>'. This way I have the old packages available to downgrade and can easily check what was changed from the ChangeLog.

That's a nice solution. Thanks!