FC5 rpm database corrupt [Solved]

[Keith G. Robertson-Turner]

Claude Jones wrote:
 > On Sunday June 11 2006 22:24, Claude Jones wrote:

 >> Yum is still not working quite right. It just supposedly updated
 >> bind and the kernel and about four other packages, and when it was
 >> finished, I came up with the same exact packages needing to be
 >> updated on the next try...

 > I seem to have prevailed. Actually, I must give credit where it's
 > due - the final clean-up was carried out by PUP. I'd been using
 > Yumex

Ahaaa!!!

Funny (not really) that you should say that, because I've had two
machines b0rked after a mass update using Yumex this week, on a
network of seven machines all config'd to update from the same
in-house "yam" server (yes yam with an "a"). The other 5 were fine,
including the server itself, *because I updated them using just yum
and not yumex*.

The type of errors I was getting with yumex were:

"scriptlet failed: error 250" or similar (sorry I don't remember the
error number) over and over on every single updated package. The
result was the RPM database became out of sync with the installed
packages.  This *only* happened using Yumex, never when just using
yum. I had to mass-uninstall then reinstall huge portions of the
distro to get it back in sync. Eventually I decided the installations
were so b0rked, that the safest thing to do was wipe and start again.

Yumex failing to find package dependencies that were *clearly*
available, and yum from the bash prompt found them immediately
afterwards.

Strange "stuck in a loop" problem reading repo data, where the yumex
progress bar would flip up to 100% then start again, over and over,
maybe a hundred times, until I had to kill it.

#] yum clean all ... didn't help.

Rebuilding the RPM database didn't help.

Conclusion - Yumex is b0rked.

Next time it happens (if I'm brave enough to ever use Yumex again)
I'll take details and file a Bugzilla.

-
K.