[CentOS] CentOS Stream suitability as a production webserver

Thu Jan 7 07:03:13 UTC 2021
Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at gmail.com>

On 1/6/21 8:01 PM, Strahil Nikolov via CentOS wrote:
> - No chance to "yum history undo last" as there are no older packages


I've seen that mentioned as a change pretty frequently, but I don't 
think it is in any meaningful sense.

In CentOS Stream, package versions may be rebased periodically, and the 
public repos will no longer have older packages to install when using 
"undo" or "rollback".

In CentOS, package versions may be rebased at minor releases, and the 
public repos will no longer have older packages to install when using 
"undo" or "rollback".

It's true that you might be able to roll back a simple patch in CentOS 
in between minor releases, but those are the updates that everyone seems 
to regard as being the safest, and least likely to cause problems, and 
therefore the least likely to need undo/rollback.  The only rational 
conclusion I can come to is that it doesn't matter if you're talking 
about CentOS today or Stream in the future: If you want to be able to 
roll back, you need a private mirror that keeps the package versions 
that you use.  If you don't want a mirror, then you need to build, test, 
and deploy complete images rather than making incremental changes to 
mutable systems.  None of this is new, it's always been this way and 
people have just accepted it.