Topic: Can new RPMs be downgraded safely

[Steve Hiner]

I was considering upgrading to the newest e-smith RPM available from the FTP site and I was wondering if it can be downgraded if I have any trouble.  Can I just force the installation of the older one to downgrade or do I have to remove the current one and reinstall the old one.  I have run the backup procedure so I'm not worried about losing my data and configuration, I am worried about losing my time (I can always reinstall from scratch and restore the data since reinstallation is so easy).

Steve

[Joseph Morrison]

Hi Steve,

There are some slightly tricky aspects to downgrading. My advice would be to backup/reinstall/restore if you need to downgrade. However, if you use the latest official e-smith RPM and follow the instructions, you shouldn't have any problems.

The instructions were recently posted on the devinfo mailing list, and will be on our web site within a few days. I'll repost them here as well:

Step 1: Fetch the new RPM
 
ftp://ftp.e-smith.net/pub/e-smith-3.0/updates/RPMS/e-smith-3.0.4-1.i386.rpm

Step 2: Install the new RPM

rpm -Uvh e-smith-3.0.4-1.i386.rpm

Ignore any warnings about not being able to delete the /home/e-smith
directory, and do not delete the directory yourself! (If you do, you'll
have to do a "factory reset" and redo the console configuration.)

Step 3: Execute the following three commands (the last one will reboot
your server):

/sbin/e-smith/upgrade-3.0-fix
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save
/sbin/shutdown -r now

This will give you the latest bug fixes, and should leave your configuration unchanged.

Best regards,
- Joe