yum update errors. Why did it do what it did?

jim1944 · #1 11th October 2009, 02:21 AM

I just did 'yum update' on my system and got a number of errors such as this one:

Code:

  Updating       : xfce4-settings-4.6.1-4.fc11.i586                       87/184 
Error unpacking rpm package xfce4-settings-4.6.1-4.fc11.i586
error: unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES/xfce4-settings.mo;4ad11889: cpio: open

Sometimes instead of "cpio: open" it was "cpio: rename". There were a total of 18 such errors. These were listed as failures in the summary at the end. I then did another "yum update" and it redid 17 of the 18 successfully. It did not redo f-spot. Here's a snippet of the summary at the end of the first update:

Code:

Updated:
  apr.i586 0:1.3.9-1.fc11                                                        
  b43-fwcutter.i586 0:012-2.fc11                                                 
  bluez.i586 0:4.42-6.fc11                                                       
  bluez-cups.i586 0:4.42-6.fc11                                                  
  bluez-libs.i586 0:4.42-6.fc11                                                  
  <snip>                                       
  yum-utils.noarch 0:1.1.23-1.fc11                                               

Replaced:
  f-spot.i586 0:0.6.0.0-1.fc11                                                   

Failed:
  exo.i586 0:0.3.101-4.fc11                                                      
  f-spot.i586 0:0.6.1.2-2.fc11                                                   
  gnome-settings-daemon.i586 0:2.26.1-11.fc11                                    
<snip>                                             

Complete!

Note that f-spot was replaced but then failed. I checked to see what was installed:

Code:

[]$ rpm -qa | grep f-spot
f-spot-screensaver-0.6.1.2-2.fc11.i586

So I lost f-spot as a result of the failure. Why did it behave that way? Why was f-spot "replaced" rather than "updated". What's the difference?

Recovery by 'yum install f-spot' was easy enough, but still.

Thanks
Jim

***Hlingler*** · #2 11th October 2009, 03:10 AM

By any chance, are you anywhere near capacity on disk ? That's one typical cause of such unpacing errors.

V

jim1944 · #3 11th October 2009, 03:57 AM

Not likely.

Code:

[] df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
                      76631096   5080000  67658464   7% /
/dev/sda7               198333     29329    158765  16% /boot
tmpfs                   154104         0    154104   0% /dev/shm

If I had to guess, I just hooked the machine up to a wireless network in my house and that's not as reliable as the wire and some bits got garbled and the garbling wasn't detected until then.

Again, it isn't the error itself that I'm questioning. It's why the replace vs. update on the f-spot package and why yum didn't pick it up on the retry, forcing a reinstall.

Jim

***Hlingler*** · #4 11th October 2009, 04:19 AM

Packages are sometimes "replaced" by equivalent packages with different names, for various reasons.

The install of "whatever replaced f-spot" failed, but f-spot was almost certainly "cleaned" during the transaction "cleaning" cycle, leaving you with: nothing. Curiously, it certainly appears to me that this was a simple, typical update from f-spot-0.6.0.0-1 to 0.6.1.2-2, not any kind of package-name-voodoo "replacement". <SHRUG>. Still: the transaction resulted (effectively) in a removal of f-spot. This kind of thing has happened to me before. YUM is not really all that smart.

Quite frankly: I'd be far more concerned about the multiple failures that occurred.

V

P.S. The above is my best assessment of what happened, based on the output you showed. I may be mistaken - the full output might shed more light on what really happened.

P.P.S. Here's where the "replace" comes from:

Quote:

* Sat Sep 19 2009 Christian Krause <chkr@fedoraproject.org> - 0.6.1.2-1
- Update to 0.6.1.2
- Move the screensaver plugin into a sub-package (BZ 519640)
- Let f-spot-screensaver obsolete older f-spot version so that it
is pulled in during update (fresh installations of f-spot will not
pull in gnome-screensaver)

Someone trying to be fancy... .

Messed you up good, didn't it ? But NOT the cause of the failed transactions. Probably not.