CentOS - Jun 2008 - YUM and installing older versions of software.

How does one specify a particular version of a software package to yum to
install?  Is this even possible?  What happens to superceded pacjkages in
repos? Are they simple removed/discarded?

yum install package-X.Y.Z-A.el5 ???

The reason I ask is if a yum update goes awry for some reason then how does
one revert to the previous (working) version? I seem to recall that up2date
had a feature whereby one could locally archive superseded packages and
rollback to a previous version was required.

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James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
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James B. Byrne wrote:
> How does one specify a particular version of a software package to yum to
> install?  Is this even possible?  What happens to superceded pacjkages in
> repos? Are they simple removed/discarded?
> 
> yum install package-X.Y.Z-A.el5 ???
The yum version in 5.2 will have a --allow-downgrade option.

Cheers,

Ralph
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James B. Byrne wrote:
> How does one specify a particular version of a software package to yum to
> install?  Is this even possible?  What happens to superceded pacjkages in
> repos? Are they simple removed/discarded?
> 
> yum install package-X.Y.Z-A.el5 ???
> 
> The reason I ask is if a yum update goes awry for some reason then how does
> one revert to the previous (working) version? I seem to recall that up2date
> had a feature whereby one could locally archive superseded packages and
> rollback to a previous version was required.
> 
I've spent some time struggling with this issue too. The current version 
of yum will let you specify an older version (as detailed in the man 
page) and install it - but you then have to be very careful with your 
`yum update`s to avoid accidentally upgrading it. Once you have a later 
version installed you cannot, currently, downgrade it - the only way to 
install an older version "over" an existing version is to remove the 
package and then explicitly install the older version, and this can 
result in some nasty dependency issues.

As has already been pointed out, this looks to be about to change in the 
next version(s) of yum in CentOS.

Regards
-Laurence