[SWLUG] Downgrading

[Dave Cridland [Clues]]

On Mon, 23 Dec 2002 10:37:54 GMT
Gareth Watkins <gw at garethwatkins.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>  Can anyone help with what to when an upgrade (in this case Red Hat 7.1 > 
> RH8) seems to break a lot of things? What I usually do is make a copy of the 
> old partition and upgrade the copy, but for reasons I don't understand, the 
> original sometimes gets upgraded too.
>  I don't understand kernels, etc, but I wondered whether any of these three 
> might be possible:
> (A) Some kind of un-upgrade (like an uninstall);

Doesn't exist, to my uncertain knowledge.

> (B) Booting the old kernel (if it's still there);

Wouldn't help. The software itself has changed, the kernel largely hasn't, as far as userland is concerned. Besides, the RH7.1 kernel is pretty rubbish, IMHO. I'm a pretty stalwart RH user, and even I avoided that one like the plague.

> (C) Doing a 'downgrade' by installing RH71 as an 'upgrade' of RH8.

I have done an "upgrade" of a later RH onto an earlier RH, but I honestly can't recall the results. I do know that it wouldn't be a "supported" path - in other more concrete terms, RH wouldn't know nor care if it worked at all.

If you're really stuck, I have a dispensable RH 8 system I could "upgrade" to RH7.1. Drop a mail to the list and ask me if you really want me to do this, and I'll dig out the relevant box (a weird thing the size of a shoebox) and do it for you at some point.

However, I suspect the problem is that some packages have been installed that have significantly changed (There are *lots* of changes between RH7.1 and RH8.0), and the original configurations you had have been stored with .rpmorig extensions. These will probably need careful examination.

Could you define "a lot of things", and I'll see if I can help you with any of them specifically?

Dave.