Yum Plug-ins
Yum provides plug-ins that extend and enhance its operations. Certain plug-ins are installed by default. Yum always informs you which plug-ins, if any, are loaded and active whenever you call any yum command. For example:
# yum info yum
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, subscription-manager
Note that the plug-in names which follow Loaded plugins are the names you can provide to the –disableplugins=plugin_name option.
Useful yum Variables
The following is a list of variables you can use for both yum commands and yum configuration files (i.e. /etc/yum.conf and .repo files).
$releasever
This is replaced with the package’s version, as listed in distroverpkg. This defaults to the version of the redhat-release package.
$arch
This is replaced with your system’s architecture, as listed by os.uname() in Python.
$basearch
This is replaced with your base architecture. For example, if $arch=i686 then $basearch=i386.
$YUM0-9
This is replaced with the value of the shell environment variable of the same name. If the shell environment variable does not exist, then the configuration file variable will not be replaced.
Reference: Redhat Docs.
The yum history command
The yum history command allows users to review information about a timeline of Yum transactions, the dates and times on when they occurred, the number of packages affected, whether transactions succeeded or were aborted, and if the RPM database was changed between transactions. Additionally, this command can be used to undo or redo certain transactions.
Listing Transactions
To display a list of twenty most recent transactions, as root, either run yum history with no additional arguments, or type the following at a shell prompt:
Examples
[fedora@localhost ~]$ sudo yum history list
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
ID | Login user | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered
——————————————————————————-
8 | fedora | 2012-08-09 20:04 | Install | 1
7 | fedora | 2012-08-07 00:32 | Install | 40
6 | fedora | 2012-08-06 23:29 | Install | 1
5 | fedora | 2012-08-06 23:23 | Install | 3 <
4 | fedora | 2012-08-06 22:49 | Install | 5 >
3 | fedora | 2012-08-06 22:46 | Install | 2
2 | fedora | 2012-08-06 22:01 | Update | 1
1 | System | 2012-05-23 02:09 | Install | 1046
history list
How can I get yum to keep package at a certain version.
There are several ways you can do this.
One is to exclude it from your updates list. See man yum.conf for more details.
Another way to pin package to a certain version is to use the versionlock plugin.
If you are using the latest Fedora then the plugin can be installed using:
yum install yum-plugin-versionlock
To add files that you want version locked, use the following yum command:
yum versionlock [package-name]
Yum Package Manager
Yum is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for rpm systems. It automatically computes dependencies and figures out what things should occur to install packages. It makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm. Yum has a plugin interface for adding simple features. Yum can also be used from other python programs via its module inteface.
Get Yum (3.4.1, or older versions)
Download yum-3.4.1.tar.gz
