Downgrade path from 9.04 to 8.1.6

[herman2018]

Hi, what is the downgrade path from v9.04 to 8.1.16?  can downgrade from 9.04 to 8.16 directly? or 9.04 --> 9.0 --> 8.16 ? or 9.04 -> 9.0 -> 8.1.0 -> 8.1.16? Please advise, thanks a lot in advance!

[BPry]

@herman2018,

How did you do the upgrade to 9.0.4? If you upgraded from 8.1.16 and simply downloaded the base image and installed 9.0.4, you can simply do a debug swm revert and go back to the previous partition. 

If you simply otherwise need to downgrade the connection, I would simply download 8.1.0 and 8.1.16 and then install 8.1.16 and let both images explode and rebuild a functional image for 8.1.16 directly. 

[herman2018]

Thanks @BPry . This is a new PA box, so the initial version is v9.04. But because of some reasons, we need to downgrade it to 8.1.16. I have already downloaded 8.1.0 and 8.1.16 to PA, can I just install 8.1.16? just one step? Please advise, thanks in advance!

[BPry · Accepted solution]

@herman2018,

Install 8.1.0 - You don't need to reboot, continue directly to the 8.1.16 install.

Install 8.1.16 - Reboot once the install has finished. 

Technically speaking you could simply install 8.1.16 and reboot and have both images explode onto the disk and build a functional install image since you're unlikely to run into any diskspace issues that would/could cause issues with that process since this is a brand-new box. However, the method described above prevents any such consideration and is technically safer.

[herman2018]

Thank you @BPry