helm rollback: Usage, Options & Common CI Errors
Revert a release to a known-good revision.
helm rollback returns a release to an earlier revision, creating a new revision that mirrors the old state. It is the manual recovery path when an upgrade goes wrong and --atomic was not used.
What it does
helm rollback NAME [REVISION] reverts the release to the given revision (or the immediately previous one if omitted), recorded as a new, higher revision number. helm history NAME lists the revisions to choose from. --wait blocks on readiness and --force replaces resources that cannot be updated in place.
Common usage
helm history web
helm rollback web 3
helm rollback web # back to the previous revision
helm rollback web 3 --wait --timeout 5mCommon errors in CI
"Error: release: not found" or "revision N not found" means the target revision was purged - history is finite (default --history-max=10 on upgrade), so very old revisions are gone; helm history shows what remains. If the original failure came from --atomic and the auto-rollback itself failed, you can see "release web failed, and has been rolled back" alongside a rollback error, leaving the release in FAILED state. Inspect with helm status and roll back to a known-good revision explicitly. Rollback re-applies the old manifests, so any immutable-field change between revisions can still fail the rollback.