For those who use Apt package management.

[kc1di]

The new Apt update coming to your Deb distro soon will now allow rollback and history.

https://9to5linux.com/debians-apt-3-2-released-with-history-undo-redo-and-rollback-support

Good News for .deb fans.

 

[Rocketing-warp9]

Nice!

 

[f33dm3bits]

yum/dnf has had had this for a while. Was using it with RHEL7, can't remember if RHEL6 had it but most likely it did.

 

[craigevil]

It is already in Debian Unstable/Sid.

 

[kc1di]

yum/dnf has had had this for a while. Was using it with RHEL7, can't remember if RHEL6 had it but most likely it did.

Yes I know but apt was lagging behind. Think it mentions rhel7 in the article.

 

[KGIII]

It's about darned time.

Well, sort of... I can't think of a time that I've needed to do so in the past decade. However, I see people on here using a backup to get back to where they were before they installed stuff. This should be useful for those people.

As an aside, I'm not sure why my installed OSes don't break. I don't take good care of them. Heck, I install applications just to see if I can spot problems that people are reporting. I have applications that I've used once.

I just keep blindly mashing the update button. When an OS upgrade is available, I jump on that as soon as I can make the time to babysit it. I'm not doing anything special to keep my OS running. They just don't want to break.

 

[Condobloke]

What implications does this have for Timeshift ?

 

[kc1di]

What implications does this have for Timeshift ?

Not sure it will have any. But time will tell.

 

[KGIII]

What implications does this have for Timeshift ?

It shouldn't have any. It's a static backup. If you've saved a backup and then rolled back an application, it will not change the backup. So, if you restore that backup, you'll have the same version installed that had otherwise rolled back.

 

[NicWelds]

Sounds like a good feature. I may never actually have to use it but it's always nice to have an undo button.

 

[deb_user]

Someday when I have nothing better to do I might experiment and try a rollback, just to see how it goes. But I'm in no hurry. One thing that should keep timeshift working, at least for me, is the ability to restore to another device if necessary. I don't back up to my internal drive, only to an external drive, which is portable. Having this feature in apt means that I will never do a backup to the internal drive.

 

[wizardfromoz]

On Fedora and RHEL. to @f33dm3bits and @dos2unix - does the feature there store the data for rollback on the subject distro, or can it be directed to an external drive?

Likewise to @craigevil re Sid?

TIA

Wiz

 

[f33dm3bits]

On Fedora and RHEL. to @f33dm3bits and @dos2unix - does the feature there store the data for rollback on the subject distro, or can it be directed to an external drive?

It needs to be either in the system's package cache or in the repo, as I remember if you are using "EPEL" the downgrade command doesn't work as they only keep one package version in the repo." If I remember it correctly that is, not sure though if yum/dnf looks in the local cache, as the Arch Linux "downgrade" command does.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Ta. On Arch, and a reason for my question above is that Manjaro (Arch-based, as we know), has been shipping with Timeshift installed for at least 5 years or more.

But further, for most of that time, they have also been using a package

timeshift-autosnap-manjaro

...whereby, when you have a significant number of updates to install, as the install process commences, Manjaro takes a Timeshift snapshot, for easy rollback.

And if the updates, or a power surge or dropout during them bricks your distro, then, provided you follow Timeshift's policy of storing snapshots to an external drive, you are good.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Ta. On Arch, and a reason for my question above is that Manjaro (Arch-based, as we know), has been shipping with Timeshift installed for at least 5 years or more.

Not sure how Timeshift fits into this, as this downgrade command they are talking about is to only downgrade a package version, not to revert your entire system to a previous state?

 

[wizardfromoz]

Aah, I may be misinterpreting its purpose.

I will read further, and perhaps install Sid and play experiment with it.

Wiz

 

[f33dm3bits]

I will read further, and perhaps install Sid and play experiment with it.

You can already play already with it on Fedora, "sudo dnf downgrade package-name".

 

[wizardfromoz]

Oh, I know that, you can also do the same with Arch/Manjaro.

I have been using it for years with Aisleriot/Klondike/Canfield patience/solitaire card game.

I use a version 3.22.x ,and once they got to the 3.3.x.y series, they stopped using the card-set theme I like.

So with Manjaro and other, I use their downgrade command, and with Debian and so on, their gdebi package installer with the old version,

Then in each case I lock the version against future upgrades.

 

[kc1di]

It is my understanding as some have already said that this is not a complete system type of back up but only able to roll back a package to it's former state. Thus time shift will still be valuable for good system wide backups. Think this is more for when you do an apt update of a package and it does not work with your gear that you can roll that package back to it's former release version. Handy in some cases and as has been said it's been available in some Distros for a while now. Apt is just catching up

 

[deb_user]

I run Sid on my daily driver, and I'm always aware of the possibility (not the likelihood, but the possibility) that an update can make the entire system unbootable. With a large update, I may not know which package caused the issue, and if it's unbootable it doesn't really matter. But I always have the past week of daily backups readily available, and I can restore one of them pretty quickly, using a live .iso from my Ventoy drive and the backup drive. Without that timeshift backup, I would be SOL. Timeshift is still necessary for me. It's somewhat less important on my server, running Stable, but I do daily backups anyway. I would do that on any system I cared about at all. Maybe not VMs, which I don't care much about, but certainly anything I do a full install with.