How to undo upgrades?

[Stauricus]

hello everybody!
i'd like to know if is there any way to undo upgrades. i like the Testing version, but sometimes new dist-upgrades will bug the system.
is it possible to save the "states" of all my current packages, so i can undo anything that goes wrong? i mean, downgrade everything again?

i found this:

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dpkg --get-selections > package_list

to backup;
and

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cat package_list | sudo dpkg --set-selections && sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

to restore.

but would it work?

thanks in advance!

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Use btrfs snapshots

[Stauricus]

interesting, this seems to be something like Windows' System Restore. but isn't any simpler way of just downgrading packages to their versions before the update?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

any simpler way of just downgrading packages to their versions before the update?

Well, you could try this:

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# dpkg -i --force-downgrade /var/cache/apt/archives/packages/$package_$version_$arch.deb

Disclaimer: I only use Debian stable and the above is something I would do in Arch, it may be entirely inappropriate for Debian.

We have a few testing/unstable users who can offer better advice than me.

[mardybear]

interesting, this seems to be something like Windows' System Restore. but isn't any simpler way of just downgrading packages to their versions before the update?

The purpose of testing is to figure out breakages not avoid them. In Debian the best way to return to the exact same state is with Clonezilla, though a hassle and not all that quick. You may want to switch to stable, which rarely has any issues. Or maybe you're using the wrong distribution. Ubuntu has a ppa for timeshift and systemback (http://iasptk.com/install-timeshift-and ... u-via-ppa/). In Tiny Core, removing a broken extension removes every single file created by the extension, other than /home configs. Simply delete the broken extension and replace with the known working version, reboot and minimal time lost.

[dasein]

The purpose of testing is to figure out breakages not avoid them.

+1

[steve_v]

i like the Testing version, but sometimes new dist-upgrades will bug the system.

If you don't like bugs, you don't like Testing. As it's name implies, testing exists for... testing, it's not intended as a daily use distribution at all.
As suggested, you could manually replace the packages from the cache, but that may well cause as many problems as it solves.
The only really safe answer to downgrading is filesystem snapshots, I like ZFS but I hear BTRFS is getting pretty good too.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Found this today:
http://snapshot.debian.org/

[Stauricus]

i've been using Testing for about two years now, and i only really care about the bugs when i'm unable to start the system. yet i still like it. i just want some safer way to upgrade.
i'll chek out these snapshots, thanks eveybody for the help

[sunrat]

I usually just make a root partition backup with Clonezilla before doing major upgrades. Takes about 5 minutes on my system. Backup /home as well if it's on a separate partition.