Re: handling rollbacks in 4.0.3 and 4.0.4

[Jeff Johnson <jbj redhat com>]

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 06:26:27AM -0400, Peter Chen wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> What is the recommended strategy for handling RPM rollbacks in 4.0.3 and
> 4.0.4?  I understand that a rollback capability is added in 4.0.4. So
> does this mean that if one does 
> 
> rpm -U foo1.rpm foo2.rpm ... foo100.rpm
> 
> and one of the rpm's fails to install, the entire transaction will be
> rolled back?

No, the all-or-nothing behavior is part of transaction set handling.
Rollbacks are an undo back to point in time, deinstalling installed
packages, reinstalling erased packages.

That being said I'd suggest you really don'y want to attempt to use
rollbacks, as there are several insoluble problems, the most important
of which is that rollbacks require perfect anal-retentive administration.
For example, you've neglected to add the option --repackage to the
upgrade line above, that innocent error alone can/will prevent you
from being able to undo other transactions.
> 
> On that note, how does one accomplish the same thing in 4.0.3 where such
> facility does not exist?  Does one use "rpm -U --repackage" then
> reinstall back the old packages when the transaction did not complete?

How does one use a functionality that isn't present in rpm-4.0.3?

73 de Jeff

-- 
Jeff Johnson	ARS N3NPQ
jbj@redhat.com (jbj@jbj.org)
Chapel Hill, NC