"yum update" caused severe problems to my system (rhel4, x86_64)
 

sorry I posted my message in the wrong place...



A couple of days ago I ran "yum update" on my RHEL4, x86_64.
yum updated a whole banch of old packages and installed
some new packages. I think it also updated kernal.
This update caused severe problems on my system.
Certain applications like "Add/Remove Applications"
inside "System Settings" stopped working.
Attempt to run other applications causes even more severe
problems. Trying to run "wine" or "regedit"
or even trying to call "notepad" either gives me black display
so that I have to reboot the computer or just
log me off my account. Also the computer
when left with a "Lock sreen" for a long time
goes to the black screen. It apperas something happened
with wideocard driver, so I have to reboot the machine.
Before this "update" my system worked fine just fine,
and now ut is completely screwed up.

I would appreciate if somebody helps me with this problem.
What is the best way to get out from this situatiom?
Could I somehow undo this yum update? How?
Or may be should I reinstalled all applications which
are damaged one-by-one manually (A lot of work ...)

I would never ever use yum again !!! Better I install
applications manually. Once I fix the problem I just uninstall yum.
John

You shouldn't uninstall yum (because it doesn't do any damage unless you run it, and not even then every day), but it's your own decicion :)

Well, the lesson obviously is that you should check what you are upgrading before going on. Especially if it's an "important" system that you can't reinstall just like that.

You can't "undo" the changes yum made, because "installing" or "upgrading" packages means that new files are copied to the system (the "package managing" part means that those changes are tracked, so that removing a package means removing the files that were copied to the filesystem when the package was installed), and in case of upgrade, any existing files are overwritten. If you don't have the old versions available (yum reposities only hold one version of a package, the newest one on that reposity, so your chances of finding a reposity with older packages are pretty small), you can't "downgrade" by installing the old packages, so your only options are to manually fix the problems (find the exact problems first) or to try to reinstall the packages and hope that it helps (probably not, if the upgrade itself worked out, but the packages just didn't work). A third option is to wait until new versions of the packages come to the reposity and then re-run yum upgrade to see if a new upgrade helps.

Typically upgrading trough yum should not create problems, but it is possible. You can try to reinstall the packages one by one if you think it helps, but I'd make sure your backups are in place, because if you can't figure anything else out, a reinstallation might be the quickest help :) Though if the problems are somewhat minor, and you have time for them, try to figure out what exactly is wrong with the apps and fix that. A kernel upgrade means that you need to reinstall any drivers that were added after the last kernel installation, like graphics card drivers, so you could just as well start from that..

My first question is, if your kernel was updated, does your bootloader point to the new kernel or is it still booting the old one? In either case, the old kernel should still be there if it's the new one causing issues, but first I'd make sure you're booting the latest one.

What bootloader are you using?

For more details into this issue, see the dup: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-x8664-633015/

Thank you for your reply. I am still fairly new to linux.
So, could you please explain in more detail how I can find out
whuich kernal the bootloader points to.
I guess I need a bootloader program on my computer, which I do
not have now. Is this right ?

I appreciate your help.

Thank you,
John

Thank you for your reply


Someone told me on this forum that Centos4 is exactly RHEL4
without RHEL logo. If this is correct, this should mean that Centos4
repositories should work for RHEL4. Actusally previously
I installed some programs from centos repositories on RHEL
and they worked fine.

I appreciate your help.

Thanks,
John

I have never seen a problem mixing Centos with RHEL as long as you made sure you kept with the correct versions. 4.1 to 4.1, etc. The only thing I can think of is if you mixed versions (4.1 to 5.1) or if you used 32bit instead of 64bit.