[rhn-users] unresolvable chain of dependencies

[Calvin Webster]

On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 11:31, Scott D. Anderson wrote:
> By default, up2date skips kernel packages.  (Why is that?)  Because of
> this, RHN says that my server is out of date and that there are critical
> updates to be applied.  

Kernel packages should never be updated, only installed. You would be
replacing a (presumably) known good kernel with one not yet tested on
your system. You also run into dependency issues like you've
illustrated.

Install the new kernel, then after you are confident it is working
properly, you can remove (rpm -e) the older kernel packages if you're
running out of room on your /boot partition.

If you run into problems with the new kernel (like you can't find the
ipw-2200 drivers to match the new kernel) you can always revert to the
older one by changing "default=0" in /boot/grub/grub.conf to point to a
previous kernel.


> So, I removed the skipping of kernel patches and did "up2date -u" and got
> the following.  I looked on bugzilla and didn't find this listed at all,
> and I'm wondering if I'm okay to ignore this (critical!) kernel update.
> 
> Fetching Obsoletes list for channel: rhel-x86_64-es-4...
> 
> Fetching rpm headers...
> 
> Name                                    Version        Rel     
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> kernel                                  2.6.9          42.0.2.EL        
> x86_64
> kernel-devel                            2.6.9          42.0.2.EL        
> x86_64
> kernel-doc                              2.6.9          42.0.2.EL        
> noarch
> kernel-smp                              2.6.9          42.0.2.EL        
> x86_64
> kernel-smp-devel                        2.6.9          42.0.2.EL        
> x86_64
> kernel-utils                            2.4            13.1.83          
> x86_64
> 
> 
> Testing package set / solving RPM inter-dependencies...
> There was a package dependency problem. The message was:
> 
> Unresolvable chain of dependencies:
> kernel-2.6.9-42.0.2.EL                   conflicts with ipw2200-firmware <
> 2.2 
> kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.0.2.EL               conflicts with ipw2200-firmware <
> 2.2 

You will probably want to "update" your ip2200 firmware and drivers and
possibly other kernel modules after you install the new kernel too.

--Cal Webster