yum update [Error -1] Header is not complete

[David Timms]

Patrick Doyle wrote:
> For the last few days or so, when I've attempted to perform a "yum
> update", the process has consistently failed.  The most common error
> is "[Error -1] Header is not complete", which is what I get after I
> download all 100% of an RPM from an HTTP site.  When yum retries from
> another mirror and the mirror happens to be an FTP site, I get other
> errors (such as 500 RE*T not understood" or "500 Unknown command").
> 
> Poking around, I've seen an explanation for the "Header is not
> complete" error that indicated that there is a problem with a proxy
> server between me an the outside world.  While I won't rule that out,
> I can say that I can use wget to fetch the rpm manually -- from a
> cursory look, the RPM seems fine to me.
> 
> Any suggestions?
Very busy mirrors ?
Aborted mirroring process ?
Initial mirror selected had old or bad metadata, and hence every correct 
download is rejected ?


I have seen timeouts from extras repos, and even dir lists that take 
more than 10 minutes to complete.

Packet trace the whole yum process: you can see if the client or server 
stops doing the right thing.

yum -d 15 and post the "whole thing", maybe as attach or on a web site 
if it is very big.

> Yes, I've tried
> $ sudo yum clean metadata
> 
> and
> $ sudo yum clean all
> 
> Strangely, however
> 
> $ sudo yum clean cache
> 
> Returns an error:
> Error: invalid clean argument: 'cache'
> 
> despite the fact that the man page claims "yum clean cache" should
> work (and has worked in the past with older versions of yum).
- clean cache has been split up into smaller parts:
clean metadata  {ie downloaded repodata}
clean dbcache   {sqlite db cache}

> If I were to fetch an RPM manually, could I verify that it is correct
> somehow and then place it someplace at which yum would be happy with
> it?
rpm --checksig my-dud-downloaded-package.rpm ?

DaveT.