yum completely freezes as root

[Panu Matilainen]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, Miner, Jonathan W (CSC) (US SSA) wrote:

>
>> Karl Larsen wrote:
>>>    Try it after you do a su - in a terminal window. The simple su gives
>>> you a sort-of root. The su - makes it a real root termial.
>>>
>>
>> Just tried it - same thing, it freezes.  Happens for "su", "su -", and
>> "sudo".
>
> Two things that I have done in the past to resolve problems with rpm and yum commands that hang.
>
> 1) rm /var/lib/rpm/__db.00*
>
> I'm not sure what information is held in these files, but deleting them 
> seems to clear up some problems. The files get automatically re-created

The __* files are BDB "database environment" files which among other 
things contain rpmdb locks. If anything accessing the rpmdb as root is 
terminated uncleanly (kill -9 or through crash) you'll need to clean up 
the environment (with the above rm -f command) before rpm/yum/anything 
else using rpmdb can access them.

 	- Panu -