how to downgrade X server

[Will Parsons]

Shane Ambler wrote:
> On 26/03/2016 04:22, Will Parsons wrote:
>> I purposely held off on upgrading the to new X server for over a year
>> now for fear of breakage, but yesterday I upgaded to the latest Xorg
>> server along with the associated video and input drivers and am left
>> with a black screen upon starting the X server.
>
> Why did you expect it to break? do you need an older nvidia driver that
> is not supported in xorg 1.14+

A general fear that a major change would be dangerous, which was
apparently well-justified, since when i actually did attempt to
'upgrade' I am left will an unusable system.

>> Since I can't figure out how to solve the problem, I'd simply like to
>> go back to the previously installed software, but the documentation is
>> unclear on how to do so.  I have the saved versions of the previous
>> packages in /usr/ports/packages, but doing the naive (and apparently
>> incorrect):
>>
>> # pkg install /usr/ports/packages/All/xorg-server-1.7.7_13,1.tbz
>> Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
>> FreeBSD repository is up-to-date.
>> All repositories are up-to-date.
>> pkg: /usr/ports/packages/All/xorg-server-1.7.7_13,1.tbz is not a valid
>> package:
>> no manifest found
>> pkg: No packages available to install matching
>> '/usr/ports/packages/All/xorg-server-1.7.7_13,1' have been found in the repositories
>>
>> It should be possible to re-install from the saved packages, right?
>> But how?
>
> That package would be from the old package system. It would mean
> removing the newer pkg to install it. Though you should be able to untar
> it into place, after removing the existing xorg, which would also
> uninstall dependant ports...

So, there'e no easy way to recover, then, and these saved ports are
essentially useless?

> The problem with xorg, is knowing what versions work together, by
> installing an older xorg you may break the newer input-mouse or libGL...
>
> The only reliable way I would expect to work constantly would be to use
> an old ports tree with the versions you want, each port in the tree
> would also match up with the same version.
>
> Looking through the svn logs, revision 374489 updated xorg to 1.12.4
> which includes security fixes that aren't being back ported to 1.7.7 so
> xorg 1.7 gets marked as forbidden. (WITH_NEW_XORG is needed to build
> 1.12 otherwise 1.7.7 is bult) The next commit removed 1.7 completely
>
> https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=revision&revision=374489
>
> If you do want to go back to 1.7.7 then you could checkout an svn
> revision of 374489 or less than 374982 and use that ports tree to build
> your own ports.

What I *want* is a usable system, and I'm now faced with being stuck
after making an apparently unwise decision to upgrade an important
working component of my system.  Doing a complete reinstall is *not*
something I want to do, but sounds like it might be easier than going
through convolutions to get back to where I was.  (Seriously, the new
pkg system doesn't have a way to undo disasters like this?)

-- 
Will