How can I uninstall / rollback the most recent update?

[skitter]

I was prompted to install a host of updates last night, and one (or more?) have rendered my system unusable unless I boot to low graphics recovery mode (failsafex). The problem I'm seeing when I boot normally is the video rate is unbearably slow (~5 FPS and worse when moving windows). I suspect the problem maybe related to the SandyBridge chipset my laptop uses. Prior to the update 3d acceleration didn't work, and now 2d is also broken. I tried selecting 'previous version of linux' and then selecting 2.6.38-8-generic-pae, but still have the same terrible video performance. I previously installed a CPU usage monitor and see the load staying below 0.2. The CPU is a core I5 and there is 4 GB RAM in the machine. I'm running 11.04 with Unity and Compiz. Any suggestions regarding how to fix this / roll back to the old version are appreciated.

[akand074]

I'm not sure if it's possible to rollback an update. But I believe you can roll back individual packages using Synaptic Package Manager. Unless someone knows of a better way, you can possibly check out your Update Manager log and roll back the packages it updated if possible. Best I can do for you.

[mikewhatever]

'Rollback' is a Windows concept similar to 'power toys', 'control panel', 'system restore', 'internet explorer' and 'windows registry'. It doesn't exist on Linux, but even if it did, do you know which one of the updates you want rolled back?.
You can use the recovery mode to fine out what was updated:

tail -n25 /var/log/apt/history.log

[CatKiller]

Once you've worked out which package it was that caused your problem you can force the version of that package to the one that worked and then lock that package to that version so that you won't get further updates. If you find that a future version has fixed whatever your problem is you can unlock the package to get it upgrading normally.

[skitter]

How foolish of me to assume that I could ask a question on the 'Absolute Beginner Talk' forum and not receive a lecture as a reply. Thanks for the feedback any how Mike.

[mikewhatever]

How foolish of me to assume that I could ask a question on the 'Absolute Beginner Talk' forum and not receive a lecture as a reply. Thanks for the feedback any how Mike.

What, you mean the two lines, 41 words and 203 characters long, lecture? Well, don't mention it.

[apoorvumang]

Same problem here, also on a sandy bridge arch. chipset!!

Did the above solutions work for you skitter?

Here's the link to my thread about the problem - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1805018

[corncob]

I tried selecting 'previous version of linux' and then selecting 2.6.38-8-generic-pae, but still have the same terrible video performance. .

My wife upgraded her Toshiba laptop to 11.04 by mistake and the same thing happened to her. I too selected 'previous version of linux' but not the pae kernel which I deleted as she only has 4 gigs of RAM. I don't want to give a lecture here but I did run

sudo update-grub

and reset the default boot up version with Startup Manager.

[apoorvumang]

I found why I got this problem: I had xorg-edgers in my repository.
sudo ppa-purge xorg-edgers did the job for me.

[dFlyer]

I was prompted to install a host of updates last night, and one (or more?) have rendered my system unusable unless I boot to low graphics recovery mode (failsafex). The problem I'm seeing when I boot normally is the video rate is unbearably slow (~5 FPS and worse when moving windows). I suspect the problem maybe related to the SandyBridge chipset my laptop uses. Prior to the update 3d acceleration didn't work, and now 2d is also broken. I tried selecting 'previous version of linux' and then selecting 2.6.38-8-generic-pae, but still have the same terrible video performance. I previously installed a CPU usage monitor and see the load staying below 0.2. The CPU is a core I5 and there is 4 GB RAM in the machine. I'm running 11.04 with Unity and Compiz. Any suggestions regarding how to fix this / roll back to the old version are appreciated.

If you know which package broke your system, and that package has the old package still on your system in /var/cache/apt/archives you can use:

sudo dpkg -i "packagename" without the quotes to revert back to the old package.