Hi TXS, On Sun, 2020-07-05 at 06:56 -0400, ksusup@trixtar.org wrote:

From 'man zypper':

--allow-downgrade, --no-allow-downgrade Whether to allow downgrading installed resolvables.

To me '--no-allow-downgrade' means that a downgrade is NOT to be considered an option

This is correct, but...

But when I issue the following:

zypper dup --no-allow-downgrade

I get a couple of dozen 'problems' like:

Problem: problem with installed package libply-boot-client5- 0.9.5+git20200418+14e91cc-1.1.x86_64

with a list of possible solutions:

Solution 1: downgrade of libply-boot-client5- 0.9.5+git20200418+14e91cc-1.1.x86_64 to libply-boot-client5- 0.9.5+git20190908+3abfab2-4.1.x86_64 Solution 2: keep obsolete libply-boot-client5- 0.9.5+git20200418+14e91cc-1.1.x86_64

...This specific package (rpm pkgs from source package plymouth) was downgraded (i.e. reverted to the lower version) in the official TW repos after an issue was found in an updated version that was -- at least immediately -- difficult to fix.

I'm a little confused... First of all how does a downgrade come up at all given the initial command switch? Seems to me that ignoring any repo package that requires a downgrade would be the zypper behavior. In the above case it would mean an automatic 'keeping' of the installed version. Second, how does a newer version become obsolete in favor of an older one? Which version is presently on the repo, was it backleveled to the 'downgrade' version??

When a package is downgraded in the repository, the updated version is cleared off. This isn't surprising in itself, even when newer versions of packages are published, the older versions are cleaned from the repository. However, it is critical for downgrades to be applied -- and therefore mitigate problems with the newer installed version -- automatically when you do a `sudo zypper dup` that the newer versions are not available in the repo too. Now, when you ask zypper to `no-allow-downgrade`, it forbids version downgrades but doesn't find any source (any repository) which provides either the same version (compared to installed) or a newer one, so it asks you what you do (either keep the installed version or allow a downgrade despite `no-allow-downgrade`). Note that "installed in system" is not a repository in itself. To work around this, you can lock certain packages temporarily or download working packages into a local dir and add it as a zypper source: `sudo zypper addrepo /path/to/local/dir localpkgs`. Or better yet, on TW just do not use `no-allow-downgrade` and let the zypper take care of version upgrades and downgrades as best it can. Hope that helps. Cheers, -- Atri Bhattacharya Sun 5 Jul 16:22:17 CEST 2020 Sent from openSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-support+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-support+owner@opensuse.org

On 05/07/2020 18.58, ksusup@trixtar.org wrote:

thanks to Atri & Neil....

What threw me is that not using the downgrade-nixing switch zypper asks me for the DVD 'openSUSE-20200214-0' which in this case is unreadable (not the first time that this happens for some reason). So I removed it as a repo source with Yast and all went well. TW being a live or hot repo structure I wonder why the DVD was in the repo list at all, technically it becomes obsolete minutes after installation. Even if available the on-line repos would be prioritised I think. So the issue is resolved, remains the question of why the DVD's become unreadable, it's THE reason I had looked into trying to stop downgrades in the first place?

It was there because you failed to remove it after installation. In a situation as described earlier, if a package disapears zypper will look at the lower priority repos, including the DVD. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)

On 06/07/2020 04.57, David Haller wrote:

Hello,

On Sun, 05 Jul 2020, ksusup@trixtar.org wrote:

...

What threw me is that not using the downgrade-nixing switch zypper asks me for the DVD 'openSUSE-20200214-0' which in this case is unreadable

Why not put the .iso somewhere on disk and use that?

'yast2 repositories' has the option, choose 'Add'->'Local ISO image...' -> set name and choose image file ...

Not on Tumbleweed: it causes grief, weeping and gnashing of teeth >:-p -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)