YUM CRASHES WILL BLOW AWAY CACHE DOWNLOADS. GUARANTEED!

[Paul Howarth]

Mike Cohler wrote:
>> It appeared to me that the default cache retention behavior changed with
>> FC5 (from FC4) and that you can turn retention back on by changing
>> the /etc/yum.conf file.
> 
>> I ran into some dependency issues and sure enough, the next time I ran
>> yum all the previous downloads were gone. I changed it to retain cache
>> files and things worked as before.
> 
>> I don't have my FC5 system in front of me so I can't provide the exact
>> config line that needs changing.
> 
>> Cheers, Greg.
> 
> Indeed the default behaviour has changed for FC5 but possibly unintentionally.
> 
> If you look at "man yum.conf" you will see that the default is for keepcache=1
> in the file /etc/yum.conf but in fact the install gives keepcache=0
> 
> Quoting from the man page:
> "
> keepcache
>               Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Determines whether or not yum keeps the cache
>               of  headers  and packages after succesful installation.  Default
>               is ’1’ (keep files)
> "
> 
> This means that the cache is cleaned out once yum has quit if set to zero (which
> it is !)
> 
> If you change this to keepcache=1 then yum should have the same behaviour as in
> FC4 i.e. to keep the rpms once downloaded.
> 
> This looks like a simple error when the isos were produced for release but no
> doubt an expert will say if it was otherwise.

I don't think it's an error really. The "default" referred to in the yum 
manpage is the default action yum will take if no "keepcache" entry is 
present in the yum.conf file. The Fedora "default" is to have this 
turned off, by specifying a keepcache=0 entry in the yum.conf file. Two 
different defaults.

The no-caching behaviour is actually good for me because I have a local 
mirror of the packages and update from that, so I don't have any use for 
the cache. In fact, I always added a cron job to do "yum clean packages" 
on a regular basis.

Paul.