On Thu, Nov 05, 2015 at 11:39:41AM -0500, Brian Reichert wrote: > So, given the knowledge of what RPMs are currently installed, is > there a way to invent a new transaction incorporating them, without > reinstalling the RPMs in question? > > I feel I've come close, with this methodology, basically coercing > yum to rebuild a database in a private directory: So, I'm closer, but I'm getting a new symptom. My test setup: First: to replicate the effect of not using yum consistently: Install server from CentOS-6.7-x86_64-minimal.iso Install repoquery, etc.: yum -y install yum-utils rsync Install GCC and dependencies, but do so with the rpm utility: yum --setopt=keepcache=1 --downloadonly -y install gcc find /var/cache/yum/ -name \*.rpm | xargs rpm -U This has the side effect of updating glibc, but yum doesn't have a transaction related to that: [root at localhost ~]# rpm -q glibc glibc-2.12-1.166.el6_7.3.x86_64 [root at localhost ~]# yum history package glibc Loaded plugins: fastestmirror ID | Action(s) | Package --------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Install | glibc-2.12-1.166.el6.x86_64 Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum. history package The question is: how can I invent an additonal yum transaction such that I can roll back to tid 1? This looks like it works, up to a point, in terms of creating a new transaction: workdir=/home/yum-hack rm -rf ${workdir} mkdir -p ${workdir} cd ${workdir} # Dup repos and rpm/yum databases for tree in /var/lib/rpm/ /var/cache/yum/ /var/lib/yum/ /etc/yum.repos.d/; do mkdir -p ./${tree} cp -pr ${tree}/* ./${tree} done # Reinstall new RPMs, via yum, in private work directory # Avoid scriplets; we don't want to depend on other RPMs find /var/cache/yum/ -name \*.rpm | xargs rpm -q -p | \ xargs /usr/bin/yum -y -C --nogpgcheck --installroot=${workdir} \ --setopt=tsflags=noscripts reinstall # sync the private yum/rpm databases back out rsync -av --delete ${workdir}/var/lib/yum/ /var/lib/yum/ rsync -av --delete ${workdir}/var/lib/rpm/ /var/lib/rpm/ Now, I see another transaction ID: [root at localhost ~]# yum history list Loaded plugins: fastestmirror ID | Login user | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered ------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 | root <root> | 2015-11-05 11:37 | Reinstall | 11 < 2 | root <root> | 2015-11-05 10:36 | Install | 2 > 1 | System <unset> | 2015-11-05 10:21 | Install | 205 history list Looks like I'm full of win, right? However, when I then try a rollback to tid 1, it does undo the yum-utils+ rsync transaction (tid 2), but then decides it's going to reinstall everything from tid 3, for some reason. [root at localhost ~]# yum history rollback force 1 ... Transaction Summary ========================================================== Remove 2 Package(s) Reinstall 11 Package(s) ... Obviously, I'm way off into uncharted/unsupported territory, but if anyone has a more clue about what yum is doing here; I'd be thrilled to hear from you... -- Brian Reichert <reichert at numachi.com> BSD admin/developer at large