yum update errors unpacking rpm packages

jim1944 · #1 17th October 2009, 10:30 PM

In previous post (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=231764) I reported an incident where a couple of packages failed to update because of errors unpacking rpm packages. There was no real problem because running yum update again resulted in successfully updating the previously failed packages.

My latest yum update resulted in failures of 4 packages: Terminal, mutt, f-spot and gnome-media-libs. 32 packages were successfully updated. I tried 3 more times and each time those same packages failed.

Then I tried updating just f-spot and got the following messages:

Code:

  Updating       : f-spot-0.6.1.2-3.fc11.i586                                                                                                                1/2 
Error unpacking rpm package f-spot-0.6.1.2-3.fc11.i586
error: unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES/f-spot.mo;4ada311b: cpio: open
f-spot-0.6.1.2-2.fc11.i586 was supposed to be removed but is not!

In fact all the error messages I got had to do with /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES. When I tried "ls" on /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES/ I got:

Code:

[root@localhost LC_MESSAGES]# ls
ls: reading directory .: Input/output error

Backing up one directory and doing "ls -l" gives this:

Code:

[root@localhost zh_CN]# ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 12288 2009-10-17 16:51 LC_MESSAGES
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root  4096 2009-09-16 21:52 LC_TIME

12288 seems a little odd for a directory. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Jim

PabloTwo · #2 18th October 2009, 12:03 AM

Quote:

12288 seems a little odd for a directory. Any suggestions?

Yes it does, but it's not really unusual.

Code:

~/> ll /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 2009-09-25 11:32 LC_MESSAGES

The fact that you can't get a listing of what's inside that directory would be a strong suggestion that something about the directory structure is corrupt. The only thing I know to suggest is to try to delete that directory.

Code:

rm -rf /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES

If you get any kind of error message that the directory can't be deleted, then that's a bigger problem. If it deletes successfully, then create it anew

Code:

mkdir  /usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES

and try the updates again.

Edit: The 12288 is 3 times 4096, which is what you're normally accustomed to seeing for directory size. Whatever unit (number of bytes reserved to hold the directory table I think) 4096 represents, the 12288 just indicates that two more are needed and used to hold all the directory table info for that directory.

jim1944 · #3 18th October 2009, 01:40 AM

Well I tried rmdir LC_MESSAGES and that didn't work because it said the directory wasn't empty. So I cd'ed into the directory and tried rm * and that failed with some kind of error I didn't record. So I rebooted (shutdown -r -F now). It discovered directory errors on the reboot and dropped me into a shell to repair the file system. It's in the middle of fsck'ing right now. I think it is going to take some time to get through fsck.

Jim

PabloTwo · #4 18th October 2009, 01:52 AM

Yep, there was corrupted data, possibly in the directory table itself, in that directory. The rmdir only works on empty directories, as it informed you. The rm -rf /path/to/directory/to/vaproize will delete a directory that contains files and/or other sub-directories.

Whether the LC_MESSAGES directory still exists after fsck gets done and you've rebooted, I suppose you'll find out soon enough. Just hope the data corruption isn't the first signs of a failing hdd. zh_CH is application language support for "simplified Chinese", so no big lose, unless you need that. The files lost there will rebuild as you install/update packages.

jim1944 · #5 7th November 2009, 04:41 PM

Been away on business for a couple of weeks. I'm back for a couple of days and then off again.

It was a failed hard drive. I was able to use rescue disk to save off home directory but fsck hangs and never finishes. I plan to replace the hard drive and install F12 when it comes out.

Jim