LinuxQuestions.org - how to delete and re-install package manager

Your post does not make clear if you are referring to the PackageKit or the actual manager. So, for this note, I'll assume that you're concerned about the program that actually removes or installs Fedora RPM files, and that you've followed unSpawn's advice for resolving the dependency problem you had before. (By the way, the commands he suggested you use need to be run with "root" permission in a terminal window. Use the command su - to switch to running as "root.")

Basically, you need a package manager to install or remove a package manager. (Unless you build your own manager from source code which, from the tone of your post, you don't want to do.)

First, a little background:

Most distributions are moving to implement the "PackageKit" methodology which is similar to the Windows system that automatically checks for program updates and, if you configure it to do so, downloads and installs them. Many other programs depend on the "PackageKit" being available, so removing it will trigger removal of all those dependent packages. On Fedora, the cascade of dependencies triggered by removal of the PackageKit will, IIRC, remove GNOME or KDE leaving you with a "command line only" system. So I hope you are not intending to remove and reinstall the PackageKit. :)

On Fedora the default base package manager is rpm, and that program is used by most of the manager shells to do the actual installation and removal of packages. I think that only the smart package manager, on Fedora, does not rely on rpm to do the actual installation and removal of rpm file.

There are several different package managers available on Fedora, although yum (The "Yellow-dog Updater, Modified" -- named for an old Red Hat distribution labeled "Yellow-dog") is the default. Other popular shells are apt and smart. There are also GUI "super-shells" that can make using the managers easier. (E.g., yumex for yum; synaptic for apt; smart-gui for smart.) Both GNOME and KDE have their own GUI front-ends (gpackage and kpackage), although they aren't normally installed by default.

Now to answer your question:

For your objective, I'd recommend using the smart package manager since it doesn't rely on the availability of yum or rpm. Open a terminal window and enter the following commands:

Code:

su -

yum install smart smart-gui

smart reinstall yum rpm

Note 1: I haven't actually tried those commands so I'm not sure if they'll work as I hope they might.

Note 2: :scratch:I don't understand why you want to reinstall the package manager commands. The only rational possibility I can think of is that you've had a disk failure and the binary files are damaged. If that were the case, your problems would be much more sever then problems with the managers.

Note 3: If this thread is, as unSpawn conjectured, related to your dependency problem, try the smart manager - it sometimes does a better job resolving dependencies then yum.