YUM is an interactive, rpm based, high-level package manager for RHEL/CentOS systems, it enables users to install new packages, remove/erase old/unwanted packages. It can automatically run system updates and does dependency analysis, and also perform queries on the installed packages and/or available packages plus so much more.
View Complete YUM History
To view a full history of YUM transactions, we can run the command below which will show us the: transaction id, login user who executed the particular action, date and time when the operation happened, the actual action and additional information about anything wrong with the operation:
# yum history
Use Yum to Find Package Info
The history sub-commands: info/list/summary can take a transaction ID or package name as an argument. Additionally, the list sub-command can take a special argument, all meaning – all transactions.
The previous history command is equivalent to running:
# yum history list all
And, you can view details of transactions concerning a given package such as httpd web server with the info command as follows:
# yum history info httpd
To get a summary of the transactions concerning the httpd package, we can issue the following command:
# yum history summary httpd
It is also possible to use a transaction ID, the command below will display details of the transaction ID 15.
# yum history info 15
Use Yum History to Find Package Transaction Info
There are sub-commands that print out transaction details of a specific package or group of packages. We can use package-list or package_info to view more info about httpd package like so:
# yum history package-list httpd OR # yum history package-info httpd
To get history about multiple packages, we can run:
# yum history package-list httpd epel-release OR # yum history packages-list httpd epel-release
Find Yum History Database and Sources Info
These sub-commands provide us with information about the history DB and additional info sources:
- addon-info – will provide sources of additional information.
- stats – displays statistics about the current history DB.
- sync – enables us to alter the rpmdb/yumdb data stored for any installed packages.
Consider the commands below to understand how these sub-commands practically work:
# yum history addon-info # yum history stats # yum history sync
To set a new history file, use the new sub-command:
# yum history new
We can find complete information about YUM history command and several other commands in the yum man page:
# man yum
