Roll back a Git commit and update safely on a VPS

When new code breaks and you want to return to a commit that worked, the safe flow has three steps: reset locally and force push, reset the VPS to match the remote (do NOT use git pull), then rebuild the running service. This guide walks each step with copy-paste commands.

Replace <commit-hash> with the commit you want to return to, /opt/apps/myapp with the project path on the VPS, and myapp with your app/service name.

On your local machine

If your code broke and you want to drop recent commits and go back to an older commit:

# 1. Reset the current branch to the old commit (discard later changes)
git reset --hard <commit-hash>

# 2. Overwrite the remote history with the current one (force push)
git push origin main --force

On the VPS (remote)

After the force push, the VPS still has the pre-rollback code. Do NOT use git pull here: the history has diverged and a git pull easily causes a merge conflict. The safest fix is to reset so it matches the remote branch 100%:

# SSH into the VPS and go to the project folder
cd /opt/apps/myapp

# 1. Fetch the latest from origin (without auto-merging)
git fetch origin

# 2. Hard reset the current branch to match origin/main exactly
git reset --hard origin/main

Rebuild and restart the service

Once the VPS code is back to the old version, rebuild/restart to update the running app.

Next.js, React, Node.js in general:

npm install
npm run build

PM2 (process manager):

pm2 restart myapp
# or
pm2 reload all

Docker Compose:

docker compose down
docker compose up -d --build

.NET applications:

dotnet publish -c Release
# Then restart the service, e.g. systemctl restart myapp

A note on caching

If you rolled back and restarted the service but the reloaded page still shows the old UI or feature, 99% of the time it's a cache. Check and clear these caches:

• Browser (use an incognito window, or enable Disable cache in the Network tab)
• CDN (for example Cloudflare)
• Service Worker (Application tab in Chrome)
• Next.js or other SSR frameworks (delete the build folder .next, dist...)

Troubleshooting