Chapter 9. Handling package management history With the yum history command, you can review the following information: Timeline of YUM transactions. Dates and times the transactions occurred. Number of packages affected by the transactions. Whether the transactions succeeded or were aborted. If the RPM database was changed between the transactions. You can also use the yum history command to undo the transactions. 9.1. Listing transactions You can use YUM to perform the following tasks: List the latest transactions. List the latest operations for a selected package. Display details of a particular transaction. Procedure Depending on your scenario, use one of the following options to display transaction information: To display a list of all the latest YUM transactions, enter: The output contains the following information: The Action(s) column displays which type of action was performed during a transaction, for example, Install ( I ), Upgrade ( U ), Remove ( E ), and other actions. The Altered column displays the number of actions performed during the transaction. The number of actions can also be followed by the result of the transaction. For more information about the values of the Action(s) and Altered columns, see the yum(8) man page on your system. To display a list of all the latest operations for a selected package, enter: To display details of a particular transaction, enter: Note You can filter the results by appending global expressions as arguments. For more details, see Specifying global expressions in yum input . Additional resources yum(8) man page on your system 9.2. Reverting YUM transactions Reverting a YUM transaction can be useful if you want to undo operations performed during the transaction. For example, if you installed several packages by using the yum install command, you can uninstall these packages at once by reverting an installation transaction. You can revert YUM transactions the following ways: Revert a single YUM transaction by using the yum history undo command. Revert all YUM transactions performed between the specified transaction and the last transaction by using the yum history rollback command. Important Downgrading RHEL system packages to an older version by using the yum history undo and yum history rollback command is not supported. This concerns especially the selinux , selinux-policy-* , kernel , and glibc packages, and dependencies of glibc such as gcc . Therefore, downgrading a system to a minor version (for example, from RHEL 8.1 to RHEL 8.0) is not recommended because it might leave the system in an incorrect state. 9.2.1. Reverting a single YUM transaction You can revert steps performed within a single transaction by using the yum history undo command: If the transaction installed a new package, yum history undo uninstalls the package. If the transaction uninstalled a package, yum history undo reinstalls the package. The yum history undo command also attempts to downgrade all updated packages to their versions if the older packages are still available. Note If an older package version is not available, the downgrade by using the yum history undo command fails. Procedure Identify the ID of a transaction you want to revert: Optional: Verify that this is the transaction you want to revert by displaying its details: Revert the transaction: For example, if you want to uninstall the previously installed unzip package, enter: If you want to revert the last transaction, enter: 9.2.2. Reverting multiple YUM transactions You can revert all YUM transactions performed between a specified transaction and the last transaction by using the yum history rollback command. Note that the transaction specified by the transaction ID remains unchanged. Procedure Identify the transaction ID of the state you want to revert to: Revert specified transactions: For example, to revert to the state before the wget and unzip packages were installed, enter: Alternatively, to revert all transactions in the transaction history, use the transaction ID 1 :

Commands:
yum history
yum history list <package_name>
yum history info <transaction_id>
yum history ID | Command line | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered -------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 | install zip | 2022-11-03 10:49 | Install | 1 12 | install unzip | 2022-11-03 10:49 | Install | 1
yum history info <transaction_id>
yum history undo <transaction_id>
yum history undo 12
yum history undo last
yum history ID | Command line | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered ------------------------------------------------------------------ 14 | install wget | 2022-11-03 10:49 | Install | 1 13 | install unzip | 2022-11-03 10:49 | Install | 1 12 | install vim-X11 | 2022-11-03 10:20 | Install | 171 EE
yum history rollback <transaction_id>
yum history rollback 12
yum history rollback 1