I'm having trouble with yum. No matter how I start it (cli, yumex, software updater) it just hangs.

e.g.
It doesn't respond to ctrl+c, closing the terminal, or "killall yum" as root, and if I try to start it again I get an error message about an existing lock that I'm unable to remove.

What can I do to get yum working again?

I periodically have yum problems in FC5. I don't know what causes it, but killing with signal 9 works. That said, I don't know how to fix the problem except to wait

You could try:

sudo yum update --noplugins

or

sudo yum -d 10 update

the latter being the debugging level (which you can alter if you are getting too much garbage. You can then troubleshoot the problem or post back the last few lines where it hangs and I'll be happy to have a look.

Regards
Chris

First thing I did was try to kill it with -9 which worked perfectly.

Next thing, I diabled the plugins... and I got a bit further but got stuck again.

Then I tried
and got
before it got stuck again.
So I thought I'd try , but that has now got stuck as well.

What can I do next?

p.s. I'm unable to kill the rpm --rebuilddb command, even with killall -9 rpm

Have you tried:

sudo yum clean all

followed by

sudo yum update

?

I have (with the debug option enabled, and I get stuck in the same place:
Reading Local RPMDB

Here's what worked for me.

rm /var/lib/rpm/__db*

rpm --rebuilddb

yum clean all

Sounds like you have a corrupted rpm database thinking about it. I'd be inclined to trash it:

http://www.rpm.org/hintskinks/repairdb/

The page is old still quite relevant.

Regards
Chris

That's basically what's suggested on the page snecklifter referred to and it worked fine. The link also explained how the db may gave got corrupted: nice reading.

Just one last question. I ran yum with the -d 10 option and saw this run across the screen:
It doesn't worry me, but it's strange anyway.

Thanks for all your help

You could also try installing apt utilities as follows.
yum -y install apt

apt-get update

The Y tells yum to say yes to all questions.

And now for the next episode...

I used yumex to do a partial update (which went fine) and fired it up again a little later to install something. However, this time yumex never got past the initialization. I decided to wait patiently, but after 3 hours (3!!) I finally killed it. However if I now try to run yum I get a lock error:
Both "killall -9 yum" and "killall -9 yumex turn up "no process killed", but I still have a lock and so no yum. (couldn't find a smily pulling out its hair)

easy.

sudo rm /var/run/yum.pid

btw, I had all sorts of probs with yumex - FC6 and later have pirut and pup which are a bit better...

thanks, that did it.

I've had a look at both purit and Pup, and I can't say I'm impressed. At least as far as ease of use and available options are concerned.
Purit appears to only allow you to add or remove software, not update. Pup doesn't appear to allow me to select which source(s) I wan't to use to provide my updates

I wish yumex wouldn't give me such a pain.

You can edit the sources by editing each repository's .repo file under /etc/yum.repos.d/

Change enabled to 0 and then pup will reflect this. If you are regularly having to enable and disable repositories then you need to consolidate. Core, Extras + Livna are usually enough for most. If you need to use ATrpms then enable freshrpms at the same time but exclude Livna permanently - this usually works for me.

Regards
Chris

How long it takes to rebuild a rpm database ? just cca ?
Because I just ended Up with the same problem with yum stucked. I needed to SIGHUP him and deleted "__db.*" files to unlock access to him once more. On my next try I get stucked again. I have done the same thing as before to try to solve it with addition I deleted the whole YUM cache directory { with back-up ofcoarse } and a tryed to install package I desired once again .. and now it is almost 1hour 30min and yum takes still 98% CPU and ended up with
#yum install mplayer
~~output ommited~~
.
.
.
~~output ommited~~
Added 5985 new packages, deleted 0 old in 228.78 sek.
Resolving Dependencies
--> populating transaction ...
---> Downloading Header for mplayer
mplayer-1.0-0.28.pre8.fc5 |=============================| 29kB 00:02
---> package set to to be updated
--> Runnung Transaction test

{{ srr for this non copy paste reply but for a good reason I am unable to copy paste the terminal output. }}

and this I see for about an hour and a half ... what is happening? .. I am thinking that rpm database is corrupted but shoud I leave yum running for a while? or SIGHUP and start rebuilding rpm database?