F8 64bit - Yum update OOPS

[Jim Cornette]

Richard Shaw wrote:
> Richard Shaw wrote:
>> I did something I don't plan on doing again, which was to blindly 
>> trust the update process. I did a yum check-update and saw the 
>> packages (something like 54mb) and then did a yum -y update && reboot 
>> & (via ssh to my MythTV box) so I could close the window and the 
>> process would complete. Next morning the box was acting funny so I 
>> rebooted it to watch it load.
>>
>> Services wpa_supplicant and nfs would not start so I started poking 
>> around the log files and could not find anything out of the ordinary. 
>> No errors in the yum log, in fact no entries for that day! I then 
>> looked in the /var/cache/yum/packages (or something like that, I'm at 
>> work right now) and saw MANY packages still there. I tried doing yum 
>> update again but it would not run because it couldn't find the right 
>> version of some library (I forget which now). I figured it was related 
>> to the packages that were downloaded but not installed so I tried a 
>> rpm -Uvh * in that folder but it complained of a unresolved dependency 
>> for htmlview. I found the package yum was having trouble with and rpm 
>> installed it.
>>
>> Here's where I made my first major mistake in trying to recover. I did 
>> a yum clean all which wiped out those packages and immediately tried 
>> yum update. This time it only found 4 packages to update which seemed 
>> to install fine. Again tried to reboot and wpa_supplicant and nfs 
>> failed to start. I ended up just disabling wpa_supplicant since this 
>> computer is hardwired only and the erase dependencies were many. The 
>> nfs issue seemed to be related to an rpc issue so I did a yum erase 
>> nfs and then yum install nfs and it was now working.
>>
>> Next issue, I use the xterm trick to use Xine to play DVD's in MythTV 
>> but it wasn't working. As it turns out Xine was fine and it was now 
>> xterm which had a library issue. Did a yum erase xterm/yum install 
>> xterm and now it's fine.
>>
>> I'm not getting any errors or failed services anymore but I can only 
>> guess what hidden gremlins are in the system now. Fortunately it's 
>> only used as a MythTV/samba/nfs system and all those are working so 
>> I'll probably leave it alone.
>>
>> Any suggestions on figuring out which packages did not get updated or 
>> on how to figure out what exactly happned?
>>
>> Things I have tried: (Some mentioned above)
>> yum clean all (no help)
>> rpm -rebuilddb (no help)
>> Looked at every log in /var/log I thought relevant. There are no 
>> entires from the original update process in yum.log. Does yum not 
>> write anything to the log file until 100% complete?
>> Is there a way to check if all dependencies of already installed 
>> packages are met?
>>
>> Richard 
> Well, to responding to my own post, here's what I found out...
> 
> On this list I saw mention of using one of the yum utilities, 
> package-cleanup and decided to give it a try. It turns out it was 
> exactly what I needed. Running "package-cleanup --problems" showed me 
> all the packages and libraries I was "missing". They were not actually 
> missing but must have been the wrong version.
> 
> While trying to fix the broken updates I had some strange yum behavior 
> (at least it was strange to me). I had to do yum install instead of yum 
> update for the missing packages but when yum ran the dependency checks, 
> it would say the packages are marked for update. The table before the 
> yes no prompt would again list them as being installed, not upgraded. 
> However, when it was all said and done everything seemed to be happy 
> again and the system definitely seems more stable.
> 
> Richard
> 

The packages were not know of by the package installed tracking 
database. They could have still be there or they could have been 
legitimately missing.
Anyway, I'm glad that package-cleanup help you to get your system back 
in a fairly stable state. I am glad that someone developed this tool and 
it is available to fix otherwise catastrophic problems caused by some 
packages not accounting for all needed program elements.
Thanks for reporting back the solution that you used. I never thought to 
suggest it to straighten out your particular problem.

Jim

-- 
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
	If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero.
		-- David Ellis