understanding “yum history” command output

“yum history” is an often overlooked but really useful feature provided in the CentOS/RHEL/Fedora systems. It allows you to perform a load of additional features that can save your skin in an enterprise environment.

It allows you to turn back the proverbial clock to the last functioning state of an application should there be an issue with a package update, without having to worry about dependencies and so on. Shown below is an example of “yum history” command output.

Understanding the “yum history” command output

Possible values and descriptions of the columns are shown below when checking a system’s yum transactions history. The “yum history” command outputs a table with the following columns:

ID

The ID number of the transaction detailed in that row.

Login user

The user that executed the action. It can show the Full Name and/or username in system. When showing “System [unset]” its because it was not executed by a normal user but instead by system for an automatic update.

Date and time

The time stamp (DATE + TIME) of the transaction start execution.

Action(s)

Possible action executed in the transaction.

Value	Action	Description
I	Install	Package(s) installed.
U	Update	Package(s) updated to a newer version.
E	Erase	Package(s) removed.
D	Downgrade	Package(s) downgraded to an older version.
O	Obsoleting	Package(s) marked as obsolete.
R	Reinstall	Package(s) reinstalled.

Altered

Number of packages altered in the transaction, followed by some extra information if any available.

Value	Description
<	The rpmdb database was changed outside Yum before the transaction ending.
>	The rpmdb database was changed outside Yum after the transaction ended.
*	The transaction failed to finish
#	Finished successfully, but yum returned a non-zero exit code.
E	Finished successfully, but an error or a warning was displayed.
P	Finished successfully, but problems already existed in the rpmdb database.
s	Finished successfully, but the –skip-broken command-line option was used and certain packages were skipped.