Yum update seems to have stalled

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Mon May 2 22:45:59 UTC 2005


Claude Jones wrote:
> Herschel wrote:
> | Claude Jones wrote:
> | 
> || I'm doing a reinstall and am now going through the update
> || process. It found a huge number of upgrades and was moving
> || through them, but now, on 933/969 it's been stalled for half
> || an hour on 'completing update for gimp'. Is this normal? If
> || not, what happens if I abort? If I choose to abort, is there a
> || preferred way? 
> || 
> | I am unsure this will be of any help, but I just installed FC 3
> | (probably a very early version off a Linux Format DVD - Jan
> | issue) on a laptop this weekend.  All efforts failed using the
> | connection via the built in updater.  Yum update (command line)
> | was suggested and it had only need for 369 updates and I mostly
> | left it alone while it churned away checking aperiodicly.  Near
> | the end I found I found it failed on Natulus, I did a Ctl-C
> | expecting the worse and just tried to rerun: "yum update" only
> | to be told I was completely updated. 
> | 
> | Note the difference, however, I had an explicit message
> | informing me of a premature halt so our situations differ.
> | 
> | It might be possible that an abort may leave you with most of
> | the updates completed, if it is still locked up you could try
> | this "method".  Warning until yesterday I have only read about
> | yum having never used it previosly - I was impressed.
> 
> Well, I ran out and ran errands while I waited to see if anyone
> had some cogent advice to offer. When I returned the machine was
> still stalled. Ctl-C didn't do anything, so I finally cold
> rebooted into level 3. When I tried a yum update again, it said
> there was a missing dependency 'boost' needed for 'boost-devel'
> and quit. I'd run yum with the fedorafaq yum.conf file that first
> time. I just ran it again in level 5 with the redhat network
> utility which uses different repos, and it installed 4 additional
> packages and said it was completely up to date. It's funny, this
> has happenned before - I try one set of repos, and there's a
> problem, and then I use the utility built into FC and it gets me
> past the logjam. There was a thread recently about removing
> up2date and I thought to myself that this kind of thing is a good
> reason to keep it. Now I have an example.   

Remember that yum uses a number of repositories.  Most of those are
mirrors of others.  When an update comes out, it doesn't appear on all
of the mirrors instantly...you have to wait a bit for the changes to
propagate.  You'll often find running "yum -y update" several times
in succession as soon as a new update comes out will eventually install
it.  It depends on which repository yum checked when you ran it--that
repo may not have the change yet.

As a result, it's often better to wait 24 hours after an update is 
released before trying to "yum update" it.  That gives the mirrors a
chance to sync up, as most only sync once or twice a day.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-    I don't suffer from insanity...I enjoy every minute of it!      -
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