Yum and Add/Remove software both hang

[confuzzled]

I am new to linux and I've just installed Fedora Core 6 onto my computer. I wanted to install remote desktop when I noticed that there was a preference setting for it but I couldn't find the program itself. I searched the forums for remote desktop and found one that suggested rdesktop (for accessing a windows computer from fc6) and gave the terminal command for it :

yum install rdesktop tsclient

so I opened a terminal and typed this in. The terminal says

Loading "installonlyn" plugin

and then it just hangs with the cursor flashing. I thought that I might have done something wrong so I tried Applications->Add/Remove Software. This pops a dialog up saying I'm trying to run 'pirut' and asking for the root password. When I enter it, the dialog dissappears and that's it.

I tried searching the forums for this problem but the only post that I could find that mentioned something similar was originally posted under a different heading. After the original problem is solved, the poster mentions this but there is no reply given.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...ftware+problem

Does anyone know how to fix this? or if there is some way to install / remove programs without using these two methods?

Thanks

[sentry]

as root type ps -e | grep yum and see what comes back...post the results.

[confuzzled]

I typed that into a terminal as root and this is what came back:

# ps -e | grep yum
 3215 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3332 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3406 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3738 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3804 ?        00:00:00 yum

[sentry]

Ok, first thing is kill all those rogue yum processes...as root type killall yum

Then check for running yum processes again ps -e | grep yum. If there's no yum processes try running yum now.

[confuzzled]

Something weird is happening I typed in what you said and the processes were still there so I added the verbose flag and got this:

[root@localhost ]# killall -v yum
Killed yum(3215) with signal 15
Killed yum(3332) with signal 15
Killed yum(3406) with signal 15
Killed yum(3738) with signal 15
Killed yum(3804) with signal 15

[root@localhost ]# ps -e | grep yum
 3215 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3332 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3406 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3738 ?        00:00:00 yum
 3804 ?        00:00:00 yum

[root@localhost]#

[sentry]

Alrighty, try escalating with a killall -9 yum

[confuzzled]

Great! That's managed to get rid of all the yum processes. I've tried running the yum install command again and it still crashed and so does Add/Remove software.

[sentry]

Cool, so lets kill any running yum processes once more for good measure, killall -9 yum

Now remove any pid files; rm -rf /var/run/yum.pid

And clean yum up for good measure...yum clean all

Now try updating.

[confuzzled]

Ok. So I ran in this order:

killall -9 yum
rm -rf /var/run/yum.pid
yum clean all

the first two steps appeared to go ok but when I ran the final command, it crashed again.

[sentry]

OK, lets try one last thing and see if it helps...reboot.

[confuzzled]

Ok... .thanks for you help by the way..

rebooting....

[confuzzled]

Yay!!! I don't know what was wrong but now it's working. Thanks very much for your help and time Sentry

[sentry]

Haha, no problem, I'm feeling a little guilty for recomending a reboot though