Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 06:42:46AM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:43:53AM +, Liviu Andronic wrote: Dear all How would I roll back system upgrades? This is the purpose of the testing distribution, to test packages for breakage so that bugs don't migrate into stable with the next release. With all due respect, if you aren't prepared to deal with occaisional breakage, then you should be running testing. In the old times with Gentoo, breakages occurred more often than needed, but it was quite easy to revert an upgrade: each tree---stable and testing---usually contained several, similar versions of the package (much closer than in Lenny and Squeeze). That meant that whenever something went wrong after a package upgrade, I simply reverted to a previous minor version, got on with my work and waited for a new version to pop up. as I said above, you can often manually fix things using dpkg and the old debs. Sometimes you'd have to force it. But to really make this work, you have to keep careful tabs on what packages were upgraded and cause the breakage. So far as I know there is no automated way of doing this. Two of the machines I use regularly dual-boot into testing. I use one to examine the new packages. The other I leave alone until it seems safe. I like to think I *qualified* myself for testing by learning to use aptitude. In lenny, I had to pin lots of backports packages. (Luckily I didn't get into some system wide pinning scheme.) With aptitude preferences set correctly, I never have to worry about a package being upgraded until I select it and I can always put a package on hold if it concerns me. My rules for running testing with aptitude: 1. Don't treat testing as a rolling release. Get used to ignoring a sometimes inflated pool of upgradable packages. 2. Consult aptitude's dependency handling and play with it, you might noticing things to help undo log jams. 3. Only upgrade packages that you are comfortable with or well read on, as the case may require. Maybe start here: http://packages.qa.debian.org/common/index.html. 4. Install apt-listbugs. 5. Put packages you are unsure of on hold in aptitude. 6. Set aptitude preferences to display changes in advance and read first. 7. Set aptitude preferences not to delete obsolete packages and don't clean the cache to often. 7.a. However, this may not help with upgrades because the prior version will still be replaced I think. 8. Do the above on a schedule so it doesn't get rushed. I have started to look into apt-cacher to see if that can pool older versions, given the disk space. Currently, my brain doesn't have much info absorption capacity left for that. The other thing, given disk space, might be to dual-boot two installations of testing, one to test testing. sup dog, I heard you like testing so I installed a version of testing with your testing so you can test testing while your run testing. Maybe too much work. :) -- Freeman -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
On 21/12/09, Tixy (debianu...@tixy.myzen.co.uk) wrote: On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 16:03 +, Rory Campbell-Lange wrote: snip You can also use the fabulous facility of snapshot.debian.net to get specific resources from a particular time in the past. snip It doesn't look like snapshot.debian.net has been updated for a long while. When I last got pointed there, the latest version of the package I wanted was 18 months old. Oh gosh you are right. I looked for http://snapshot.debian.net/package/dnsmasq and the last packages are from the end of February last year; 2.41-2. The lastest version of dnsmasq is 2.51-1. How disappointing. -- Rory Campbell-Lange r...@campbell-lange.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
Hello On 12/21/09, Andrew Sackville-West and...@farwestbilliards.com wrote: As I understnad it, generally speaking you don't. You *can* if you use dpkg directly and still have the .deb files from the previous version of a package lying around (/var/cache/apt/archives/). I did think of manual dpkg installation of old archives and pinning packages as solutions. However, would there be specific dpkg/aptitude/Synaptic files/folders that store the current tree information and that could be backed-up before updating that information and restored in need? Liviu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 06:28:50PM +0100, Johannes Wiedersich wrote: Andrew Sackville-West wrote: With all due respect, if you aren't prepared to deal with occaisional breakage, then you should be running testing. s/should/should not/ indeed. thanks... A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
Dear all How would I roll back system upgrades? I am using Debian testing and after I hit Reload package info in Synaptic, it will download the package versions that are current in the testing tree, and will completely forget the old tree (which after the update will be dubbed as now). If I perform an upgrade of a package, say a critical one, fglrx (video card) or broadcom (wifi), and the new version comes with an incompatibility that breaks my system, I currently see no way to revert to the old (now) tree, the old versions where the packages worked just fine. In other words, if you update the package info and upgrade some packages that come with breakages, you're doomed to start hunting for a fix (in my case, this morning, without X and without internet). In the old times with Gentoo, breakages occurred more often than needed, but it was quite easy to revert an upgrade: each tree---stable and testing---usually contained several, similar versions of the package (much closer than in Lenny and Squeeze). That meant that whenever something went wrong after a package upgrade, I simply reverted to a previous minor version, got on with my work and waited for a new version to pop up. To get back to my original question, is there an easy way in Debian, with aptitude or Synaptic, to revert to the old tree after the package info was reloaded (or aptitude was updated)? Thank you Liviu -- Do you know how to read? http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm Do you know how to write? http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:43:53AM +, Liviu Andronic wrote: Dear all How would I roll back system upgrades? As I understnad it, generally speaking you don't. You *can* if you use dpkg directly and still have the .deb files from the previous version of a package lying around (/var/cache/apt/archives/). I am using Debian testing and after I hit Reload package info in Synaptic, it will download the package versions that are current in the testing tree, and will completely forget the old tree (which after the update will be dubbed as now). If I perform an upgrade of a package, say a critical one, fglrx (video card) or broadcom (wifi), and the new version comes with an incompatibility that breaks my system, I currently see no way to revert to the old (now) tree, the old versions where the packages worked just fine. In other words, if you update the package info and upgrade some packages that come with breakages, you're doomed to start hunting for a fix (in my case, this morning, without X and without internet). This is the purpose of the testing distribution, to test packages for breakage so that bugs don't migrate into stable with the next release. With all due respect, if you aren't prepared to deal with occaisional breakage, then you should be running testing. In the old times with Gentoo, breakages occurred more often than needed, but it was quite easy to revert an upgrade: each tree---stable and testing---usually contained several, similar versions of the package (much closer than in Lenny and Squeeze). That meant that whenever something went wrong after a package upgrade, I simply reverted to a previous minor version, got on with my work and waited for a new version to pop up. as I said above, you can often manually fix things using dpkg and the old debs. Sometimes you'd have to force it. But to really make this work, you have to keep careful tabs on what packages were upgraded and cause the breakage. So far as I know there is no automated way of doing this. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
On 21/12/09, Andrew Sackville-West (and...@farwestbilliards.com) wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:43:53AM +, Liviu Andronic wrote: In other words, if you update the package info and upgrade some packages that come with breakages, you're doomed to start hunting for a fix (in my case, this morning, without X and without internet). This is the purpose of the testing distribution, to test packages for breakage so that bugs don't migrate into stable with the next release. With all due respect, if you aren't prepared to deal with occaisional breakage, then you should be running testing. This is indeed true. If you are particularly worried about a package you can pin it, however. In the old times with Gentoo, breakages occurred more often than needed, but it was quite easy to revert an upgrade: each tree---stable and testing---usually contained several, similar versions of the package (much closer than in Lenny and Squeeze). That meant that whenever something went wrong after a package upgrade, I simply reverted to a previous minor version, got on with my work and waited for a new version to pop up. as I said above, you can often manually fix things using dpkg and the old debs. Sometimes you'd have to force it. But to really make this work, you have to keep careful tabs on what packages were upgraded and cause the breakage. So far as I know there is no automated way of doing this. You can also use the fabulous facility of snapshot.debian.net to get specific resources from a particular time in the past. To assist you in doing this you may wish to run a dpkg -l installed_packages_$(date +%d%m%Y).txt or something so that you know what version of what you had installed previously. Rory -- Rory Campbell-Lange Director r...@campbell-lange.net Campbell-Lange Workshop www.campbell-lange.net 0207 6311 555 3 Tottenham Street London W1T 2AF Registered in England No. 04551928 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Andrew Sackville-West wrote: With all due respect, if you aren't prepared to deal with occaisional breakage, then you should be running testing. s/should/should not/ ;-) - -- Johannes Three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia, and the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksvsFEACgkQC1NzPRl9qEVC8gCfVF836028GKK460y/uYk97I1y rTcAnjb2g5lmCjhQnclNDqanDwi5PMPE =q5L7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Liviu Andronic wrote: How would I roll back system upgrades? I am using Debian testing and Just roll back your last working backup. If you don't have a working backup you should consider implementing a backup system, NOW. It's not mainly update problems, where backups come handy. As others have pointed out, if you haven't run 'aptitude clean' or something similar, since you installed the package in question, the 'old' version of package should still be somewhere in /var/cache/apt/archives - -- Johannes Three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia, and the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAksvsW8ACgkQC1NzPRl9qEVWmwCfYweMOTmtEeGp41iElAbQyqKT kxQAniILHx9DknSUGWFTAPLdq6ObydrX =4Cl6 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: rolling-back, reverting system upgrades?
On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 16:03 +, Rory Campbell-Lange wrote: snip You can also use the fabulous facility of snapshot.debian.net to get specific resources from a particular time in the past. snip It doesn't look like snapshot.debian.net has been updated for a long while. When I last got pointed there, the latest version of the package I wanted was 18 months old. -- Tixy -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
