Dependency problem in the yum update FC3->FC4 chain

[Michael Wiktowy]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:

>On 9/6/05, Michael Wiktowy <mwiktowy at gmx.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Due to a dependency problem, a new libxml2 didn't get pulled in, a
>>required python module didn't get loaded and yum wouldn't run anymore.
>>    
>>
>
>How you proceed depends on the the exact errors issues which are being
>raised in the attempt.
>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq seems to work for people
>with clean fc3 systems moving to fc4... but you could have it a corner
>case or something. It doesn't sound like your followed this procedure
>so I'm not sure what to suggest for recovery.
>
>
>-jef
>  
>
You misunderstood the intent of my original message ...

I have fixed my problem already.

I used that page you quoted as a reference right from the start (and
would love to be able to edit that page to add my warning to the
Problems section. If I could get edit status my username is
MichaelWiktowy) and it was very helpful. However, I tried to get too
smart about it, went off-script and (in addition to the suggested
updating of the kernel separately first) I updated the updater
separately first. That borked yum.

What I am asking is if it is worth it for me to take the time to gather
all the proper version info, track down the exact dependency and file a
bug in bugzilla eventhough that upgrade path is unsupported (presumably
meaning that no bugs showing up using that method will be fixed)?

I guess what my question boils down to is: Can I upgrade my system piece
by piece with yum to test the integrity of the dependencies or is that
kind of dependency robustness an unreasonable/unsupported goal for
Fedora? I am soliciting some opinions as to whether this problem (which
is admittedly a corner case which would be rarely encountered using yum
and never encountered using anaconda but a valid problem IMHO) is worth
putting in bugzilla or am I just wasting everyone's time.

This is a separate issue from /etc/ config changes that are handled by
anaconda. I understand that those are not/cannot be handled by yum. My
problem was definitely a package dependency issue.

The details of my problem (an solution) for anyone who has read this far:
- Start with an up to date FC3
- install the FC4 fedora-release package
- yum update yum (this is the off-script part which at the time I
thought would be a good idea)
- yum won't yum no more
- download and force the FC4 libxml2 package to install (rpm will
complain about other packages needing the older libxml2 unless you --force)
    - this is the step where I would have to do some hunting to find out
the the package that wrongly didn't include this dependency to the new
libxml2
- yum will yum now and you can update the rest as one big blob

My ideal would be for yum + rpm to have an extra degree of fail safety
and *always* work; no matter what upgrade path is chosen.

/Mike