Yum: the dreaded metadata disease

[Claude Jones]

On Tuesday December 18 2007 1:44:26 pm Michael Schwendt wrote:
> I don't think this is true. Metadata files like
> "primary.sqlite.bz2" for F8 updates are less than 1 MiB in
> size. Compared with package sizes, it doesn't take long to
> sync. And tools like rsync don't corrupt the live files while
> downloading the new data to a temporary file. How likely is it
> that you encounter a dozen mirrors (from a list handed out by
> Mirror Manager) which offer a repomd.xml file that doesn't
> match the metadata files?
>
> What I've experienced multiple times is mirror 'A' giving a
> repomd.xml from three days ago while mirror 'B' was offering
> up-to-date repodata contents. And Yum had started with mirror
> 'A' and subsequently compared A's repomd.xml checksums with
> B's metadata files. Obviously, "yum clean metadata" helps as
> soon as you find a stable connection to a single mirror
> without yum switching through the entire mirror-list.
>
> Any time you see the metadata checksum error, interrupt yum
> and examine the remote "repodata" directories of the first few
> mirrors manually. The mirror-list is in
> /var/cache/yum/updates/mirrorlist.txt and you only need to add
> "/repodata" to the urls within that file to visit them with
> your favourite browser (or to copy the entire repodata dir
> before you examine it).

As I already stated, your reply was better informed than mine. It 
doesn't happen enough to really bother me so I haven't 
investigated as closely as you. 

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA