I can not install old solana version 1.14.x and below - Error: Unknown release: 1.14.10

Question

I am trying to install old solana versions.

sh -c "$(curl -sSfL https://release.solana.com/v1.14.10/install)"

But im getting this error:

Error: Unknown release: 1.14.10

Answer 1

This is breaking because old installer version got only 100 release tags in their code. This was fixed later by introducing paging:

https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/pull/21417

The install downloads a file called solana-install-init into the /var/ folder and then calls it. You can not change this file since its a binary. But you can change the install script to call that file with other SOLANA_INSTALL_INIT_ARGS.

Here is a wrapper script that does that and takes the version you want to install as a parameter. It downloads the install script from version 1.18.20 and then replaces the desired version in that script and then calls it:

#!/bin/bash

# Check if a version argument is passed; if not, use a default
DESIRED_SOLANA_VERSION=${1:-"v1.14.10"}

# Fetch the latest installer version
LATEST_INSTALLER_VERSION=$(curl -sSfL https://api.github.com/repos/solana-labs/solana/releases/latest | grep -m 1 "tag_name" | sed -ne 's/^ *"tag_name": "\([^"]*\)",$/\1/p')

# Download the latest install script
INSTALL_SCRIPT_URL="https://release.solana.com/$LATEST_INSTALLER_VERSION/install"
curl -sSfL "$INSTALL_SCRIPT_URL" -o solana_install_latest.sh

# Make the script executable
chmod +x solana_install_latest.sh

# Replace SOLANA_INSTALL_INIT_ARGS with the desired version in the downloaded script
sed -i.bak "s/^SOLANA_INSTALL_INIT_ARGS=.*/SOLANA_INSTALL_INIT_ARGS=$DESIRED_SOLANA_VERSION/" solana_install_latest.sh

# Verify that the change was made (for debugging, optional)
grep "SOLANA_INSTALL_INIT_ARGS=" solana_install_latest.sh

# Run the modified install script
./solana_install_latest.sh

You can call it like this:

./solana_install_wrapper.sh 1.14.10