Down-grading To An “obsoleted” Package

Home » CentOS » Down-grading To An “obsoleted” Package
CentOS 2 Comments

Hi,

Does anyone know if there is a clean way to “downgrade” to the old rpm package when it was previously replaced by another that obsolete it?

I mean, say that I have installed some rpm “A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm”, and along comes “B-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm”, whose spec has

Obsoletes: A

Now, if I do “rpm -U B-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm” or “yum install B-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm” or (if B is available through an enabled repository)
“yum update”, what happens is that “A” gets removed and “B” is installed in its place. Then I decide I want to switch back to “A”. So what do I
do? I know that one answer is

rpm -e B
rpm -U A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm

– but what if A and B provide facilities required by other installed packages? I’ll then have to pass “–nodeps” when removing B, but that’s something that I really want to avoid as it means loosing control over whether all dependencies are satisfied. So is there an alternative?

“rpm -U A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm” alone seems to fail with file conflicts, assuming “B” replaces some of “A”‘s files. In a real scenario I tried, there was no mention of the fact that something that was essentially a newer version of the same package, was already installed.

“yum upgrade A” (when the package is available on a repository) fails in a similar manner.

“yum localinstall A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm” is a bit smarter – it exists with a message like “Cannot install package A. It is obsoleted by installed package B”.

“yum downgrade A” (via repository) says something like “No Match for available package: A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm”.

“yum localdowngrade A-1.0-1.x86_64.rpm” would seem to have the highest probability of success based on the above, except that there is no such command :-/

Any other ideas?

– Toralf

This e-mail, including any attachments and response string, may contain proprietary information which is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is for the intended recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient or transmission error has misdirected this e-mail, please notify the author by return e-mail and delete this message and any attachment immediately. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, distribute, forward, copy, print or rely on this e-mail in any way except as permitted by the author.

2 thoughts on - Down-grading To An “obsoleted” Package

  • Ah, yes. I sort of forgot that there was such an option.

    Maybe this is the best solution. I mean, I’d really like to have something somewhat “more automatic”, but this way at least you don’t loose control over the dependencies.

    Thanks,

    – Toralf

    This e-mail, including any attachments and response string, may contain proprietary information which is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is for the intended recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient or transmission error has misdirected this e-mail, please notify the author by return e-mail and delete this message and any attachment immediately. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, distribute, forward, copy, print or rely on this e-mail in any way except as permitted by the author.