Related articles Downgrading packages

The Arch Linux Archive (a.k.a ALA), formerly known as Arch Linux Rollback Machine (a.k.a ARM), stores official repositories snapshots, iso images and bootstrap tarballs across time.

You can use it to:

Downgrade to a previous version of one package (last version is broken, I want the previous one)

Restore all your packages at a precise moment (my system is broken, I want to go back 2 months ago)

Find a previous version of an ISO image

Packages are only kept for a few years, afterwards they are moved to the Arch Linux Historical Archive on archive.org.

Location

The Arch Linux Archive is available at https://archive.archlinux.org/.

The source code is also available for setting up your own mirror.

Directories

The Archive is split into 3 main directories detailed below.

├── iso ├── packages └── repos

/repos

The repos directory contains daily snapshots of official mirror organized by date like in the following example.

repos ├── 2013 │ ├── 08 │ │ └── 31 │ │ ├── community │ │ ├── community-staging │ │ ├── community-testing │ │ ├── core │ │ ├── extra │ │ ├── gnome-unstable │ │ ├── kde-unstable │ │ ├── lastsync │ │ ├── multilib │ │ ├── multilib-staging │ │ ├── multilib-testing │ │ ├── pool │ │ ├── staging │ │ └── testing │ ├── 09 │ │ ├── 01 │ │ ├── 02 │ │ ├── ... │ │ ├── 21 │ │ └── 22 │ ├── 10 │ │ ├── 01 │ │ ├── 02 │ │ ├── ... │ │ │ ├── 11 │ └── 12 ├── 2014 │ ├── 01 │ │ ├── 01 │ │ ├── 02 │ │ ├── ... │ │ │ ├── 02 │ ├── 03 │ ├── ... │ └── 09 │ ├── 01 │ ├── ... │ └── 28 ├── last ├── month └── week

Note: The last 3 special directories (last, week and month) which links respectively to the last synced repository, to the last Monday and to the first of the current month.

/packages

The packages directory contains all versions of each package with their signatures. One directory by package and package directories are grouped by their first letter.

├── packages │ ├── a │ │ ├── awesome │ │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.0-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz │ │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.0-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz.sig │ │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz │ │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz.sig │ │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.1-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz │ │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.1-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz.sig │ │ │ ├── ... │ │ │ │ │ ├── ... │ │ ├── awstats │ │ └── axel │ │ │ ├── b │ ├── ... │ └── z

You can use the magic subdirectory .all to access all packages by their name. It acts as a flat directory containing all versions of every package.

├── packages │ ├── .all │ │ ├── awesome-3.5.1-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz │ │ ├── ... │ │ ├── zsh-5.0.2-3-i686.pkg.tar.xz │ │ ├── zsh-5.0.2-4-i686.pkg.tar.xz │ │ └── ...

You can download the full package list (there are over a hundred thousand packages) as a compressed index: index.0.xz.

$ curl https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/.all/index.0.xz | unxz

0ad-a14-1-i686 0ad-a14-1-x86_64 0ad-a14-2-i686 ... zziplib-0.13.62-1-x86_64 zziplib-0.13.62-2-i686 zziplib-0.13.62-2-x86_64

/iso

The iso directory contains official ISO images and bootstrap tarballs sorted by release date.

├── 2014.09.03 ├── 2014.10.01 ├── 2014.11.01 ├── 2014.12.01 ├── 2015.07.01 ├── 2015.08.01 ├── 2015.09.01 └── 2017.04.01 ├── arch ├── archlinux-2017.04.01-x86_64.iso ├── archlinux-2017.04.01-x86_64.iso.sig ├── archlinux-2017.04.01-x86_64.iso.torrent ├── archlinux-bootstrap-2017.04.01-x86_64.tar.gz ├── archlinux-bootstrap-2017.04.01-x86_64.tar.gz.sig ├── md5sums.txt └── sha1sums.txt

Frequently asked questions

How to downgrade one package

Find the package you want under /packages and let pacman fetch it for installation. For example:

# pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/ ... packagename.pkg.tar.xz

Letting pacman fetch it will automatically download the package's detached .sig file and verify it according to /etc/pacman.conf settings.

Alternatively, download and install the package manually using pacman -U .

See also Downgrading packages#Automation for tools that simplify the process.

To restore all packages to their version at a specific date, let us say 30 March 2014, you have to direct pacman to this date, by editing your /etc/pacman.conf and use the following server directive:

[core] SigLevel = PackageRequired Server=https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2014/03/30/$repo/os/$arch [extra] SigLevel = PackageRequired Server=https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2014/03/30/$repo/os/$arch [community] SigLevel = PackageRequired Server=https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2014/03/30/$repo/os/$arch

or by replacing your /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist with the following content:

## ## Arch Linux repository mirrorlist ## Generated on 2042-01-01 ## Server=https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2014/03/30/$repo/os/$arch

Then update the database and force downgrade:

# pacman -Syyuu

If you get errors complaining about corrupted/invalid packages due to PGP signature, try to first update separately and . Alternatively, you can decide to temporarily disable signature checking altogether.

Note: It is It is not safe to mix Archive and up-to-date mirrors. In case of a download failure, you will fall-back on an upstream package and you will have packages not from the same epoch in the rest of the system.

Historical Archive

Maintaining the Arch Linux Archive consumes significant amount of resources, so old packages are cleaned up from time to time.

Before removing them, old packages are uploaded to a dedicated collection "Arch Linux Historical Archive" on archive.org.

The Historical Archive does not provide a way to access a "snapshot" of Arch packages at a given point in time. However, there is a redirection on archive.archlinux.org so that downloads for old packages are redirected to the Historical Archive on archive.org . There should be no visible impact from the user side, except from the fact that archive.org is generally quite slow for downloading.

Finding packages in the Historical Archive

The Arch Linux Historical Archive collection has an index of all packages: https://archive.org/details/archlinuxarchive

It is also possible to directly access a package by its identifier. The general pattern for identifiers is archlinux_pkg_sanitized_package_name .

To obtain the sanitized package name, simply replace any @ , + or . character in the package name by an underscore _ .

For instance, the identifier for is archlinux_pkg_lucene__ .

You can then access the details page of a package via its identifier, for instance: https://archive.org/details/archlinux_pkg_lucene__.

It is also possible to run searches with the archive.org Python client:

$ ia search subject:"archlinux package" subject:'mysql'

{"identifier": "archlinux_pkg_ejabberd-mod_mysql"} {"identifier": "archlinux_pkg_ejabberd-mod_mysql-svn"} {"identifier": "archlinux_pkg_gambas3-gb-db-mysql"} {"identifier": "archlinux_pkg_gambas3-gb-mysql"} {"identifier": "archlinux_pkg_libgda-mysql"}

Downloading packages from the Historical Archive

All available package versions (and their signature) can be accessed via the download page of a package: https://archive.org/download/archlinux_pkg_lucene__.

To download, verify and install a package using pacman:

# pacman -U https://archive.org/download/archlinux_pkg_cjdns/cjdns-16.1-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Package verification is controlled by pacman's RemoteFileSigLevel option. Note that if you use pacman, you have to figure out the dependencies yourself.

It is also possible to use the archive.org Python client.

Download a specific version of a package:

$ ia download archlinux_pkg_cjdns cjdns-16.1-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz{,.sig}

Download all x86_64 versions of a package, with signatures:

$ ia download archlinux_pkg_cjdns --glob="*x86_64.pkg.tar.xz*"

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