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RPM Rollback in Fedora Core 4/5
by Chris Tyler Jan. 22, 2006
Fedora Core 4/5 uses yum for package management. yum is build on top of rpm, and pirut, pup, and yumex are graphical interfaces built on top of yum. Together, these tools provide a simple-to-use, powerful package management system.
One of the least-known secrets about rpm is that it can rollback (undo) package changes. It can take a fair bit of storage space to track the information necessary for rollback, but since storage is cheap, it's worthwhile enabling this feature on most systems.
Here are cut-to-the-chase directions on using this feature:
- To configure yum to save rollback information, add the line tsflags=repackage to /etc/yum.conf.
- To configure command-line rpm to do the same thing, add the line %_repackage_all_erasures 1 to /etc/rpm/macros.
- Install, erase, and update packages to your heart's content, using pup, pirut, yumex, yum, rpm, and the yum automatic update service.
If/when you want to rollback to a previous state, perform an rpm update with the тАУrollback option followed by a date/time specification. Some examples:
rpm -Uhv --rollback '9:00 am', rpm -Uhv --rollback '4 hours ago', rpm -Uhv --rollback 'december 25'.
Chris Tyler is a programmer and Linux network administrator with a focus on the X Window System and LAMP. He has programmed in two dozen different languages over the past 20 years, and now teaches at Seneca College, Toronto.
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