Dealing with 94 rpmnew files on new FC4 install after yum update

[Roger]

Paul Howarth wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 15:13 -0700, Roger wrote:
>   
>> I have just installed FC4 on a new PC and ran yum update.  The yum 
>> update created 94 .rpmnew files.  Most of these end with .conf.rpmnew 
>> and the others end with /config/xxxxx.rpmnew.
>>
>> I understand these to be application configuration files that were not 
>> installed by yum because there may have been local customizations.  In 
>> normal circumstances, I should review each .rpmnew file against its 
>> counterpart and determine if if the configuration files can be swapped 
>> by renaming or if the .rpmnew file must first be edited.  However, at 
>> least a few of the .rpmnew files seem to be binary and I do not know the 
>> function of each application that has an .rpmnew file.
>>
>> Because this is a new installation (I have customized my monitor 
>> settings and made a static IP address), a guess is that I just want all 
>> the .rpmnew files installed -- and maybe the existing files renamed to 
>> .rpmold just in case.  Is there an installation option that I missed or 
>> is there a cleanup script somewhere to deal with this problem?  Would 
>> use of smart (or apt) instead of yum have resulted in fewer problems?
>>     
>
> Are you by any chance using x86_64 and are many of these files
> associated with packages that you have both .x86_64 and .i386 versions
> installed? A common cause of spurious .rpmnew file generation is when
> multiple packages own the same config file (as is the case described
> above, and also for example /etc/vimrc).
>
> Paul.
>
>   
Yes, I am using x86_64 and the rpmnew files seem to be consistent with 
packages that have .i386 versions.  I tried removing a few 
(alsa-lib.i386, apr.i386, and SDL.i386) and yum showed no dependencies 
and removed them.  When I entered a remove command for the x86_64 
counterparts, yum showed many dependencies so I did not remove them. 

So now the question is why do I have these .386 versions and is it a 
good idea to remove them all?

I should note that I am trying to install MythTV and after the initial 
yum update I added atrpms as a yum repository.  atrpms seems to be a bit 
flakey (sometimes there and sometimes not), but I think all the rpmnew 
files predated my adding atrpms as a repository.  I could do a clean 
install again to verify that as I am having trouble getting lirc to 
install correctly.

Roger