YUM transaction management

View YUM transaction history and manage transactions through the YUM Transaction History dashboard, which works with CentOS Linux version 5, 6 and 7.

Note: YUM transaction history dashboard is not supported in CentOS 8.

The dashboard displays the YUM transaction history and can be used to roll back, undo, and redo transactions in your deployment.

Rollback: The rollback feature undoes all transactions up to the point of the specified transaction.
Undo: The undo feature reverts a selected transaction only.
Redo: The redo feature repeats the recent transaction action.

Note: Active kernel cannot be rolled back for a kernel update.

Requirements

To use the YUM Transaction History dashboard, ensure that you have the following requirements.

Use YUM version 3.2.28 and later. The rollback functionality is not supported for the YUM versions 3.2.28 to 3.2.29-22.
Note: In the dashboard, if the YUM version of a selected endpoint is earlier than version 3.2.29-22, a warning sign next to the YUM version will indicate that the version does not support the rollback action. The Rollback button is disabled for all transactions if the version is not supported.
Subscribe to the Patching Support site.
Activate the YUM Transaction History analysis.

YUM transaction actions

The Actions column identify the YUM transaction actions in the dashboard. The following table give details of the actions for every transaction.

Table 1. Description of transaction actions
Action	Abbreviation	Description
Downgrade	D	At least one package has been downgraded to an older version.
Erase	E	At least one package has been removed.
Install	I	At least one new package has been installed.
Obsoleting	O	At least one package has been marked as obsolete.
Reinstall	R	At least one package has been reinstalled.
Update	U	At least one package has been updated to a newer version.

For more information about YUM history, go to Red Hat Product Documentation site.

YUM transaction analyses

The YUM Transaction History dashboard uses the following analyses:

YUM Transaction History analysis: BigFix generates a log which records the results of the actions that are taken in the YUM Transaction History dashboard. The YUM History Transaction analysis retrieves the content of the action log yum_history.log. The log is located in /var/opt/BESClient/EDRDeployData/yum_history.log.; YUM rollback capable field

YUM Logs analysis

YUM log is the official log that YUM generates by default in /var/log/yum.log. To change the default location, modify the log file settings in /etc/yum.conf. The YUM log analysis is very useful for troubleshooting purposes.

The analysis has 2 properties.

YUM Log property: Logs all the operations that are performed and identifies the transactions that are modified. This log retrieves the last 40 lines of the YUM log file.

YUM History Dashboard action log: This log lists the action logs for the redo, undo, and rollback operations from the action. The actions write the logs to /var/opt/BESClient/EDRDeployData/yum_history.log. The YUM History Dashboard action records the latest 5 actions.