How can I downgrade packages?

[Pogeymanz]

I was using the testing repo for a while, but I keep having strange problems. (If you go to the laptop section of the Arch forums you'll see. My name is pogeymanz)

So, I thought to disable the testing repo. I thought that if I just did a pacman -Syu, it would downgrade for me, but it wont...

How can I downgrade all those packages to the stable versions? Do I have to manual remove, then reinstall all of them?

If that's the case, what would be the syntax to do that in one line?

("pacman -Rs [package] -S [package]" maybe?) *EDIT: Nope. That doesn't work.

[MisfitI38]

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade_packages
:)

[Pogeymanz]

I tried just installing the packages wih testing disabled and it seemed to be working, but this is what happened:

:: Retrieving packages from core...
libtool-1.5.26-1-i686 560.0K 96.6K/s 00:00:06 [#####################] 100%
initscripts-2007.11... 16.1K 82.1K/s 00:00:00 [#####################] 100%
libldap-2.3.39-2-i686 580.1K 93.4K/s 00:00:06 [#####################] 100%
perl-5.8.8-9-i686 12.0M 90.3K/s 00:02:16 [#####################] 100%
:: Retrieving packages from extra...
guile-1.8.4-1-i686 1237.9K 93.6K/s 00:00:13 [#####################] 100%
perlxml-2.34-4 223.2K 90.0K/s 00:00:02 [#####################] 100%
perl-xml-simple-2.18-1 63.9K 91.5K/s 00:00:01 [#####################] 100%
pinentry-0.7.3-1 138.6K 85.2K/s 00:00:02 [#####################] 100%
checking package integrity...
(14/14) checking for file conflicts [#####################] 100%
error: could not prepare transaction
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
kbd: /lib/initcpio/hooks/keymap exists in filesystem
kbd: /lib/initcpio/install/keymap exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.



And this is what happened when I just didn't put kbd in there:

Targets: kernel-headers-2.6.23.1-2 glibc-2.7-7 gcc-libs-4.2.3-3 gcc-4.2.3-1
libtool-1.5.26-1 guile-1.8.4-1 initscripts-2007.11-2
libldap-2.3.39-2 mkinitcpio-0.5.17-2 perl-5.8.8-9 perlxml-2.34-4
perl-xml-simple-2.18-1 pinentry-0.7.3-1

Total Download Size: 0.00 MB
Total Installed Size: 44.40 MB

Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
checking package integrity...
(13/13) checking for file conflicts [#####################] 100%
( 1/13) upgrading kernel-headers [#####################] 100%
( 2/13) upgrading glibc [#####################] 100%
reloading init: done.
==> ATTENTION INTERNATIONAL USERS:
==>
==> Locales are no longer included in the glibc package.
==> They are generated by /usr/sbin/locale-gen depending on the contents
==> of /etc/locale.gen.
==> glibc will try to autodetect the required locales now, if you need
==> additional locales, please enable them in /etc/locale.gen and run
==> /usr/sbin/locale-gen
==>
==> Check /etc/locale.gen.pacnew for new supported locales
==>
Generating locales...
en_US.UTF-8... done
en_US.ISO-8859-1... done
Generation complete.
( 3/13) upgrading gcc-libs [#####################] 100%
( 4/13) upgrading gcc [#####################] 100%
( 5/13) upgrading libtool [#####################] 100%
( 6/13) upgrading guile [#####################] 100%
( 7/13) upgrading initscripts [#####################] 100%
warning: /etc/rc.conf installed as /etc/rc.conf.pacnew
------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR ENCRYPTION USERS

The "password" column in /etc/crypttab has now
two special keywords:
- ASK ask for a passphrase on boot
- SWAP use a random key and create swapspace
This is particularly dangerous, as the
volume in question will be overwritten
If you use SWAP as your passphrase (which
is insecure anyway), be sure to remove it
from /etc/crypttab to avoid dataloss!

See /etc/crypttab(.pacnew) for more information.
------------------------------------------------
( 8/13) upgrading libldap [#####################] 100%
( 9/13) upgrading mkinitcpio [#####################] 100%
warning: /etc/mkinitcpio.conf installed as /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.pacnew
(10/13) upgrading perl [#####################] 100%
(11/13) upgrading perlxml [#####################] 100%
(12/13) upgrading perl-xml-simple [#####################] 100%
(13/13) upgrading pinentry [#####################] 100%


Do I need to change my rc.conf or mkinitcpio.conf?

[floke]

The 'pacnew' stuff is just old config files that have been stashed away for safekeeping in case you need them. If everything seems to be working ok I wouldn't worry about it, But if you need your old configs then that's where they are.

[Pogeymanz]

That's what I figured.

What about those errors from installing kbd? What can I do to install this thing?

[fwojciec]

By default pacman is not going to overwrite any files that exist on the system -- although overwriting can be forced using -f switch. In this case it should be safe to allow pacman to overwrite the conflicting files -- you can do it by issuing a "pacman -Syf kbd" command.