FC6 Yum Error When Updating System
 

Hi. I use yum to update my FC6 system and I always seem to have this package conflict. If other updates are available, I find that I have to remove "velocity" in order to install them. Then I try the following and get the error at the end of the yum details:

1. Run "yum clean all".
2. Install "velocity" with yum.
3. Run "yum update".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Updating:
velocity noarch 1.5-2jpp jpackage-generic 363 k
Installing for dependencies:
excalibur noarch 1:1.0-0.r508111.3jpp jpackage-generic 25 k
excalibur-avalon-logkit noarch 1:2.2.1-0.r508111.3jpp jpackage-generic 77 k
servletapi4 noarch 4.0.4-4jpp jpackage-generic 74 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 3 Package(s)
Update 1 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 540 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/4): excalibur-avalon-l 100% |=========================| 77 kB 00:01
(2/4): servletapi4-4.0.4- 100% |=========================| 74 kB 00:00
(3/4): excalibur-1.0-0.r5 100% |=========================| 25 kB 00:00
(4/4): velocity-1.5-2jpp. 100% |=========================| 363 kB 00:01
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test


Transaction Check Error:
file /usr/share/java/avalon-logkit.jar from install of excalibur-avalon-logkit-2.2.1-0.r508111.3jpp conflicts with file from package avalon-logkit-1.2-4jpp.3

Error Summary
-------------

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Please assist and thanks in advance for your help.

Yes, that will happen. This is most likely because FC6 is obsolete

ahem.

f8 is current. f7 is the oldest maintained release, which will become obsolete in turn when f9 is released. Update your distro. If you do not want to update every 16 months or so, then you should find a distro with a longer release cycle.

You may be able to work around the conflicts by removing the older conflicting packages then installing the newer ones.

Thanks for the reply. I've actually been researching how to upgrade the system with yum. Based on what I've read, it appears to be best to go from fc6 to fc7 and then from fc7 to fc8. Do you think that this is the best way?

Unless you have stuck very close indeed to the dafault installation, the most reliable upgrade is to do a fresh installation of fedora 8.

If you have a seperate /home partition, this is quite simple. Do an advanced install, and tell it not to format the home partition - but do specify the mountpoint (/home). Caution is suggested though - there was a paradigm shift going from 6 to 7.

If not - backup your /home directory and, when you install, manually partition. Do not create an LVM, just create boot, root, swap, and home. The files you copy back will be all your visible data and the hidden directories for mozilla and evolution (so you don't lose those settings).

It is usually safe to update in this way every second release. Have fun.

A fresh install is not necessary. I have successfully updated a few PC's starting with Fedora Core 1 up to Fedora 8. Some even on servers in a production environment.

Package conflicts usually are related to packages that have been manually added. I had similar issues with xine packages that were not part of Fedora itself. My advice is to remove the conflicting packages entirely and reinstall them afterwards.

Why do you need to install velocity before yum updating? Makes more sense to install it afterwards.

I suppose you have downloaded and installed the Fedora 7 repositories before running yum clean all.

The switch from F6 to F7 was actually one of the smoothest among release upgrades in my case.

Linux

The official suggested method is still to do a fresh install. This is particularly important when going from FC6 to whatever. FC6 still used both the hdX designation and the sdX designation for drives. Starting with F7 all drives are designated sdX. In the yum upgrade process, the system tends to loose track of which is which on a lot of hardware. hda becomes sda and sda becomes sdb(on some hardware). So when it is converting stuff from the old hda to the new sda it sometime puts it on the old sda instead. Generating a big unusable mess.

But how much would you be willing to bet on this machine running flawlessly through the upgrade process? Two levels? From an obsolete release?

Exactly. IOW: fedora devs don't want to bet on it.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades
... pushes you very strongly at a fresh install.

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/releas...Related-Issues
While they are mostly talking about 3rd-party software, I have had upgrade failures on 70% of tries - even with only official installs. The less installed, the more likely an upgrade will work.

Upgrading servers seems to go well though - perhaps due to the simplicity of the install.

And even with all this - the bandwidth involved in a fresh f8 install vs online upgrade FC6-f7-f8 is much smaller. The fresh install is faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

Of course - f9 is out real soon. May be good advice to wait a couple of weeks and install that - saves on an extra upgrade.

Thanks for all of your help.

I tried to run the yum commands to do the upgrade(my data was backed up, so I thought that I would give it a try), but I was not able to install the packages that switch repositories due to FC6 package conflicts (even tried as root). Couldn't find any help for this, so I decided to do a fresh install.

Fedora has really made it easy. I downloaded the live CD (my old reliable linux box doesn't have a DVD drive) and installed the OS from that. I then used yum to install all of the server software that I needed. Now I'm just in the process of getting my sites back online.