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dandan
Asked: 2016-05-19 09:08:52 +0800 CST

How to verify if an rpm was installed from scratch or upgraded?

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we installed the following rpm's via yum on redhat version 5

# rpm -qa --last | head -10
  kernel-headers-2.6.18-408.el5                 Wed May 18 13:33:59 2016
  bind-utils-9.3.6-25.P1.el5_11.6               Wed May 18 13:33:59 2016
  redhat-release-5Server-5.11.0.2               Wed May 18 13:33:58 2016
  nss-3.19.1-4.el5_11                           Wed May 18 13:33:58 2016
  nspr-4.10.8-2.el5_11                          Wed May 18 13:33:58 2016
  bind-libs-9.3.6-25.P1.el5_11.6                Wed May 18 13:33:58 2016
  kernel-2.6.18-409.el5                         Wed May 18 04:13:58 2016

How can I tell if these RPMs were installed from scratch or just upgraded?

I try by rpm -qi

but from rpm -qi , we not get the info if rpm was installed from scratch or upgraded.

Secondly, if an rpm was upgraded then how can I downgrade it to the previous version?

example when I try to downgrade:

 yum downgrade openssh-server-5.3p1-117.el6.x86_64

 Loaded plugins: product-id, rhnplugin, security, subscription-manager
 This system is receiving updates from RHN Classic or RHN Satellite.
 Setting up Downgrade Process
 Only Upgrade available on package: openssh-server-5.3p1-117.el6.x86_64
 Nothing to do



  yum list 'openssh-server'

  Loaded plugins: product-id, rhnplugin, security, subscription-manager
  This system is receiving updates from RHN Classic or RHN Satellite.

  openssh-server.x86_64      5.3p1-117.el6
  Available Packages
  penssh-server.x86_64   5.3p1-118.1.el6_8
linux yum redhat rpm

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Apparently (no experience since I am not a yum user), yum keeps a history of transactions, which you can list using

    yum history

    or 

    yum history list

    to get a list of transactons and then 

    yum history info <transaction id>

    which will tell you what was installed/updated etc

    and you can undo transactions using

    yum history undo <transaction index>

    Purely based on the rpm commands, afaik there are no means to know whether an rpm was installed from scratch or updated. I don't know either whether yum keeps a version of all rpms it once installed. If not; there is no guarantee you can undo a certain transaction. Suppose package-1 was installed from the install cd (or any other repository that is not available anymore); then updated to package-2. Suppose you want to undo that update transaction; that would be only possible if you have package-1.rpm available; which is not always (and mostly not) the case.

    Suppose you want to downgrade an rpm; you can search (yum search; or rpm search or...) a lower version of the rpm you want and install that one. That will always work (supposing you have all the correct dependencies); using yum, rpm or others.

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