How to lock a specific package version using yum

Summary

This article discusses how to lock a specific package version using yum.

Applies to

• DSE and agent package installations  on RHEL-based systems using Yum

Symptoms

When installing a specific version of DSE or Agent packages, yum automatically installs or upgrades to a later version than specified.

For example you might run the following command:

sudo yum install datastax-agent-5.2.5 --exclude dse-full

but the Agent package version 6.7 will be installed rather than version 5.2.5

Solution

As per RedHat Technote 98873 users can restrict yum to install or upgrade a package to a fixed specific version using the versionlock plugin of yum.

To do this:

1. Install the package named yum-plugin-versionlock (called yum-versionlock in RHEL 5).

   # yum install yum-plugin-versionlock
   

   The /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/versionlock.list will be created on the system.

2. To install or lock the version of the DSE/Agent package, add that package name to the /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/versionlock.list file.  As per previous example:

   # yum versionlock datastax-agent-5.2.5
   

   (Alternatively, you can edit the filelist, /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/versionlock.list, directly.)

• The above configuration will not allow to upgrade the Agent package to a version later than what the version that was installed at the time the locking was performed.
• Yum will attempt to update all packages, while excluding the packages listed in the versionlock file.

See also

• Upgrading to earlier versions of DSE with YUM installs latest version
• Manually deploying DataStax Agents from RPM

Other Commands

To display the list, use:

# yum versionlock list

To discard the list, use:

# yum versionlock clear