System locked up during update of kernel, yum in unclean state and kernel half-installed

[Tom Horsley]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 20:36:47 -0500
Deron Meranda wrote:

> And then doing a "yum check" again confirms that it is still confused
> and has multiple versions installed.

The last time I got in this state, I finally resorted to
doing low-level rpm commands to remove the old versions of
the duplicates,but used the options to avoid running
scripts and triggers and also the all-important --nodeps
so it wouldn't screw up even more packages.

Then, while the system was still up after doing that,
I did a yum reinstall of all of those packages without
specifying a particular version  to get
the updates installed for sure, and I think
my system was happy after that (at least I haven't yet run
into any problems).