How do I force yum install even if it's a downgrade? [closed]

Question

So the scenario is as follows: I have some systems that I download builds for from our CI server and install them. These builds are un-released builds, but the naming convention has a timestamp in it to determine newer builds. So I install one of these builds, test it, great.

Well, at some point I want to revert back to our actual released builds which are on our local yum repo. But if I did yum install -y somepackage, install is going to say that the version its trying to download is obsoleted by this unreleased version I've installed.

What I'm wondering is if there's a way to force yum to install the build even if its obsoleted by the currently installed one, or am I going to be forced to yum remove the installed build before yum installing the released build?

I don't mind doing the latter, but the former is a better solution because some high availability components that depend on this RPM complain when it goes missing, so I'm wondering if it's possible.

Thanks ahead of time!

Emulsion

Stack Overflow is a site for programming and development questions. This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about programming or development. See What topics can I ask about here in the Help Center. Perhaps Super User or Unix & Linux Stack Exchange would be a better place to ask. Also see Where do I post questions about Dev Ops? – Calabro

@Calabro thanks for the heads up, I didn't know SO had branched out the infrastructure and ops pieces out into their own pages. – Emulsion

Answer 1

Yes, you can install an older available version (of an already installed package) with the downgrade sub-command:

yum -y downgrade mypackage-1.2.3-4

Note that you have to explicitly specify the version/release of the package you want to downgrade to.

This command is also available with dnf, the yum successor.

Tennessee

Answer 2

yum downgrade somepackage

Also, commands under yum history may be of help to you in similar situations.

Knothole

Answer 3

I have been looking for a solution as well. This is - sadly - the only workaround I could find:

pkg=package-1.2.3-0
yum -y downgrade $pkg
yum -y install $pkg

These commands will result in your exact version being installed; when downgrading or upgrading.

Uneventful

Tested this under CentOS 7, and there a yum downgrade package-1.2.3.0 was sufficient - i.e. no additional yum install ... required. Is the .rpm suffix in your answer an oversight? – Tennessee

Yes yum downgrade suffices I it is a downgrade, but not when it is an upgrade and vice-versa – Uneventful

Answer 4

yum update-to <package-name>

Stria

Answer 5

For Centos 7 Static 32bit lib's:
Get http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64/Packages/glibc-static-2.17-307.el7.1.i686.rpm

rpm -qlp glibc-static-2.17-307.el7.1.i686.rpm

rpm -ivh glibc-static-2.17-307.el7.1.i686.rpm

Helbonia