RPM roadmapping

[Robert Scheck]

Hello Mike,

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007, Mike Chambers wrote:
> BUT, upon saying all that, is there a way to create, make, or use some
> sort of restore point, to get rpm back in shape if a library or
> something gets out of wack?  Maybe a rpm --backup option that can be
> used to backup rpm at a certain point.  Then somehow it can be brought
> back to that state, even if it's a tar'd file, gzipped or whatever?
> Reason to have it that way is due to rpm not being functional or allowed
> to do anything because some library or whatever got screwed up, and you
> have to reinstall the OS instead of just a quick restore.

I think, you're looking for the rollback features being already part of
rpm5.org for a longer time. What does this feature do? When you're updating
or ereasing a package, it creates a package of the changed one. It's more
or less equivalent to your expected tarball or gzipped one. Please notice,
that of course this rollback rpm is not the same rpm as installed before,
it is just a copy of what was in filesystem and was covered by the package.

IIRC this feature was introduced in November 2005 at rpm5.org. You're able
to extract things from this package my the help of rpm2cpio/cpio similar to
a tarball. It's a nice feature which saved my ass in the past a couple of
times, yes.


Greetings,
  Robert