rpm, touch and other commands segmentation fault - How to fix?

[mxc4]

Hi there,

I have a FC4 server on which several command result in semgentation faults. These include touch,cp,rpmb Cat /home/user/test > /home/user/test2 and other command that write to log files. work fine.

I think I needs to reinstall coreutils to get it this problem fixed. If there is another way please let me know. In any event I can't use rpm to re-install coreutils as it gives a segmentation fault and yum says coreutils is already installed so "yum install coreutils" doesn't work.

If I try to remove rpm with "yum remove" then it wants to remove yum as well and then I would not be able to install anything!

How can I repair the rpm install without breaking yum? I also thought of removing coreutils with yum and then re-installing but this will remove a ton of packages and I am not sure if yum will work after that.

it seems like the cirular dependency between yum and rpm is a major problem in this case.

Please help

[w5set]

terminal time
rpm -qa coreutils
should give the version and complete name, etc..
rpm --replacepkgs coreutils.xx.xx.x
using the version installed in place of the "x's" and this should replace the currant coreutils with a "new" install of it.

[mxc4]

thanks i will give it a try when i get to the machine again. I dont think it will work as rpm gives segmentation faults. Unless these switches somehow over come that

[brunis]

I have this same odd problem.. i can use rpm though.. but yum segfaults.. other utils like ping work if I use a known hostname.. if i ping localhost it works, but if i make up some random name, ping obelix, it just segfaults..

Are the coreutils responsible for this behaviour ? and why are they not properly tested before distributed ? i'll have to turn off yum nightly updates.. i can't risk this happening again.. linux is supposed to be reliable..

regards,
Dennis Jakobsen

[brunis]

w5set, I tried your suggestion and I get "rpm: only installation, upgrading, rmsource and rmspec may be forced"

[brunis]

I upgraded to FC5 and that fixed the problem.. so it must have been a package from a yum update .. confirmed by the fact that doing a yum update on my newly working FC5 broke it once more.. c'mon, i can't be the only one with this problem when it's software upgrade problem from a random mirror on BOTH FC4 and FC5 ?!?

[brunis]

O.. M.. G.. .. i finally found it.. it was the latest samba 3.0.23.. i had wins configured in my nsswitch.conf and samba segfaults every time it does fallback to wins resolution..