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Red Hat docs say:

To see which installed packages on your system have updates available, use the following command:

yum check-update

What command must I run to view all available versions for a package installed on my system?

Example: yum check-update tells me java6 update #43 is available, but what if I want update #40?

Kevin Meredith
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2 Answers2

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This command won't focus specifically on one package, but by using a regex to do the matching you can still see what's available:

$ yum list available java\*
java-1.4.2-gcj-compat.i386                                                   1.4.2.0-40jpp.115                                                      installed
java-1.6.0-openjdk.i386                                                      1:1.6.0.0-1.36.1.11.9.el5_9                                            installed
Available Packages
java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-devel.i386                                             1.4.2.0-40jpp.115                                                      base     
java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-javadoc.i386                                           1.4.2.0-40jpp.115                                                      base     
java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-src.i386                                               1.4.2.0-40jpp.115                                                      base     
java-1.6.0-openjdk.i386                                                      1:1.6.0.0-1.40.1.11.11.el5_9                                           updates  
java-1.6.0-openjdk-demo.i386                                                 1:1.6.0.0-1.40.1.11.11.el5_9

You can make it "smarter" by filtering the output using grep.

rogerdpack
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slm
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  • Then I can run `yum update ` provided the package, to which I'm trying to upgrade, is, in fact, a higher version of my currently installed package? – Kevin Meredith May 15 '13 at 19:05
  • That would be correct. You can update to the next version from what you currently have installed. – slm May 15 '13 at 19:08
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    Note that the official repositories _very_ rarely carry more than one version of a package, old packages are obsoleted for a reason. – vonbrand May 15 '13 at 20:03
  • You want to use --show-duplicates to see all the versions, but as vonbrand said if you are using CentOS/Fedora you only get the latest anyway (If you pay for actual RHEL, you'll get a lot of choice and may want to look at the upgrade-to command as well). – James Antill May 17 '13 at 18:30
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To see currently installed package version + check what is the latest available version, use --showduplicates list <package name>, for example:

$ sudo yum --showduplicates list 'tar.*'

Loaded plugins: search-disabled-repos
Installed Packages
tar.x86_64   2:1.26-32.el7    installed              
Available Packages
tar.x86_64   2:1.26-29.el7    rhelosp-rhel-7.4-server
tar.x86_64   2:1.26-31.el7    rhelosp-rhel-7.4-server
tar.x86_64   2:1.26-32.el7    rhelosp-rhel-7.4-server
Noam Manos
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