Dependency problems when updating system
 

I ran the FC6 updater that is on my desktop. Told me I had 71 updates. I clicked on it, told it to apply the updates, and then I get:
How do I fix this? Never understood the RPM system and why it rarely works. If it knows what the problem is, why can't it fix it?

That error is more to do with mirrors that have not synced properly than rpm itself although at times badly built rpms can cause similar problems. What you need to do is use the exclude option for yum, so that the problematic package is not upgraded e.g.
Alternatively, if you are using the GUI updater, just deselect the problematic packages and then try to upgrade them again after a few hours.

Since your to lazy to report the actual errors or any useful related information, my wild in the dark guess is you have a mixed mode installation (32 and 64-bit apps and libs). A quick check using your "reported" error;

$ rpm -qa --qf="%{n}-%{v}-%{r}.%{arch}\n" elfutils-libs
elfutils-libs-0.125-1.fc6.x86_64
elfutils-libs-0.125-1.fc6.i386


Break the updates into smaller chunks, since your have and issue with elfutils-libs (note the correct package name) try just updating this;

yum update elfutils-libs

Okay, I did the exclude and the rest of the packages have updated correctly except this one elfutils. Here is the error as requested by Lenard:

Now what confuses me more is that this is a pretty fresh install of Fedora Core 6 that has been sitting on my hard drive since FC6 first came out. Never really did much with it or touched it, yet it somehow hosed itself with its own dependency problems. Is this common with Fedora Core??

Please run this rpm command, it will assist in the resolution of this issue;

rpm -qa --qf="%{n}-%{v}-%{r}.%{arch}\n" 'elfutils*' | sort

This is what I get:

elfutils-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libelf-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libelf-0.125-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libelf-devel-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libs-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libs-0.125-1.fc6.i386

OK, it looks like you can resolve this issue by hand. Download the four elfutils rpms from Fedora Updates directly into a common location where they are the only rpm packages.

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...pdates/6/i386/

Then as root type something like;

rpm -Uvh elfutils*.rpm --force

Normally it is not a good idea to use the force switch, but in this case it is appropriate to use. You have both older and newer versions of some elfutils rpm packages installed, this will re-install the newer versions and remove the older at the same time.


Why this happened is beyond me, but this does happen when yum (and the related rpm packages) are updated at the same time as other packages. In the future if you happen to notice any yum updates it would be a good idea to first update yum first then the rest;

yum update yum
yum update

.

Another popular way is to ask yum to un-install offending packages, it will remove anything associated (dependencies). Then turn around and tell yum to install that package and it will install the newer with dependencies.

yum remove packagename

yum install packagename

Here I would go for elfutils-libelf-devel, or elfutils

Uninstalling and reinstalling the elfutils still gives me errors.
I downloaded each of those elfutils RPM's into a directory. When I run your command to force it to install and upgrade, it still won't let me! Still gives me dependency conflicts, even with the --force option!
Now what do I do?

Have you tried removeing both elfutils, elfutils-devel (if installed) & re-installing, because some of the errors relate to elfutils-devel.

Make sure elfutils-libs, elfutils-libelf appear in the list of dependencies getting removed also, if not you may need to remove them also. Best to put them all in one command.

When I tried removing elfutils, it told me I had to remove 150+ dependencies, ranging from X server to OpenOffice. It sounds like if I remove elfutils, I will hose my system. I'd be better off reinstalling. I'm going to wait to hear back from others and if nobody has a solution, then I will have to reinstall. Such a shame because I need to learn RedHat/Fedora Core for my Linux+ certification which I may take. I really hate the whole Red Hat Package Manager and never understood it. I am more comfortable with Ubuntu and their 'aptitude' for installing programs

These are the ones I have listed in /var/log/rpmpkgs (installed)

elfutils-0.125-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
elfutils-libelf-0.125-1.fc6.i386.rpm
elfutils-libelf-0.125-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.125-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
elfutils-libs-0.125-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm

I have 64bit, I do not have elfutils-devel installed, I noticed you have two versions of elfutils-libelf and elfutils-libs, is this list from the cache or what is installed? To me all you need to do is remove the two (123) presumably older ones before upgrading the elfutils & elfutils-libelf-devel to version (125) based on what my packages are (all 125)

elfutils-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libelf-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libelf-0.125-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libelf-devel-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libs-0.123-1.fc6.i386
elfutils-libs-0.125-1.fc6.i386

What's funny is that the last error you showed has 123 conflicting with 123 and 125 conflicting with 125.

You may already know, but there is a list in /root called install.log of all packages installed in the order they were installed if the /var/log/rpmpkgs list is not there as I believe it shows up after first instance of an update and is also updated once a week. The GUI software updater is good for showing all available, installed, not installed on the list tab. Just put the radio button on "All packages".

EDIT: re-installing probably won't make a difference. Never had such experiences with Mandrake/Mandriva which is also Red Hat based, I find their rpm extension "urpmi" is fairly flawless compared to "yum".

Here's what happens when I do yum remove elfutils-devel elfutils-libelf
This looks bad. That's like the whole system. I will do a reinstall and see if this problem occurs again. Will report back later.

Is Mandriva like Red Hat/Fedora? I have Mandriva 2007, just never got around to using it.