[NBLUG/talk] How to undo a yum update

[Dave Sisley]

Augie Schwer wrote:

>You can use the "exclude" option in the yum.conf to ignore updates
>to xorg* type packages.
>  
>
I think this is the way to go for now.  Then I can remove the exclude 
line from my yum.conf file when I feel I can trust the xorg update again 
(they've got some splainin' to do).
Per the man page for yum.conf, I've just added this line to the bottom 
of my '[main]' section:

exclude=xorg*

I could add more packages by just listing them and separating them with 
a space.

>If you want to back an already installed RPM out you can rpm -e it,
>or if it has dependencies and you are going to replace the package
>with something similar you can rpm -e --nodeps it.
>
>Augie.
>  
>
Right.  I started down that path, but wasn't sure how to handle 
dependencies.  If you try and rpm -e xorg-x11, there's a fairly long 
list of packages that depend on it. I was afraid of breaking something 
else if I pushed it.

What do you suppose would happen if I were to 'rpm -e --nodeps xorg-x11' 
(which would remove xorg-x11.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.48.1) and then run 'rpm 
-ivh xorg-x11.i386 6.8.2-37.FC4.45.rpm' (I'm making up the name of the 
rpm file, but ~.45 was the last good version of xorg I had)?  Wouldn't 
all the other xorg*.48.1 packages be confused?  Or are things not that 
sensitive?

Also, more generally, is there a way to avoid this sort of grief in the 
future?  The whole point of yum (or apt-get, or redhat network, etc.) is 
to be able to update the software on a machine without having to track 
down every package and dependency yourself.  I don't think I could read 
the release notes for every update that becomes available at my 
repository.  By the way, my repository for now is the default one picked 
by Fedora  when it sets up yum for you.  Could those repositories be too 
'bleeding edge'?  Does anyone know of more conservative repositories?

Thanks again for the input.

-dave.