[lug] Backing out yum upgrades

[Matt Bidwell]

I might suggest two alternative methods, both are a little more work
up front, but can be switched to previous versions immediately. Both
require mucking with source.
Option one: Environment Modules http://modules.sourceforge.net/
Great when you require multiple versions of the same package. You can
have certain packages load by default on login, or let users load the
packages and versions they need.
Option two: I put a lot of my applications, compiled from source, in
/opt. Part of this is my paranoia that something like HTTP from
distros have things compiled into it that I don't want. The other part
of this is I can go and upgrade the OS without breaking vital
applications.  The plus to this is I can compile and run a new
version. For Apache, I'll have a system link for /opt/httpd pointing
at /opt/httpd-2.4.3. When I have a new version I just point the system
link to that. If there's some unintended consequence of the new
version, I just point back to the old. I still put the start script in
/etc/init.d, but I will usually name it something like
`companyname`-httpd.  That's all part of being able to upgrade the OS
without clobbering my applications.

Matt

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 7:02 PM, David L. Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
> Jeffrey S. Haemer wrote:
>> I'd like to do regular package updates on my CentOS 6.2 boxes.  I'd also
>> like to be able to back out selected updates if users say, "*Noooo ...*"
>>
>> *[root at ba-vm-cie-01]#* yum history undo 36
>
> I'm kind of surprised that yum tracks transactions like that and provides an undo (which might even
> work if you had a repository with the old package).
>
> I'm not surprised at all that Kevin knew how to get what you wanted.
>
> Dave
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