yum database incorrect
 

I removed java from my system, and it asked to remove 89 other things from my system. I let yum remove them all. I got the rpm of java from java.sun.com and installed that. When I went to reinstall ant, it says that it is already installed. When I do a yum list, it says ant is installed as well. When I do a yum remove ant, it acts like it is removing it, and says it is successful. Yet after all this, yum list shows it as installed. Ant is clearly not on the system.

I tried rebuilding the rpm database, but that had no effect. How can I fix this issue?

rpm -qa | grep java <- to see if it's still installed. I wouldn't depend on yum to say whether or not it's installed, I only use yum to install or upgrade packages to get the required dependencies.

And if you want to remove just one package, use rpm to remove it, not yum as it might remove things you still need or want.

I guess yum (and rpm) remove is looking for /usr/bin/rebuild-gcj-db in order to remove ant properly. That is part of java-1.4.2-gcj-compat. I'm running FC5, and in order to get java 1.5.0 through yum, it looks like I need FC7(t3). My original problem is that ant was using both 1.4.2 and the 1.5.0 that I installed from java.sun.com. I was trying to do an ant build and it would build 1/2 of the build script with 1.4.2, and the other half with 1.5.0. It was bizzare so I thought removing 1.4.2 would solve the problem, but it made it worse.

Oh well, since you installed java from a third party, why not do the same for Ant. Just search the apache site. In my experience, it's a lot more convenient than arguing with yum. The time I wasted on tomcat! Then I downloaded it from apache and all I had to do was unzip it - 10 seconds of work ...

once I got everything else fixed, that is what I did. It seemed to fix the other problems I was having with the other version of ant. Somehow parts of it were tied into java 1.4 even though /usr/bin/javac was for 1.5. All is good now, at least with what I was working on. I'm sure I still have things that yum thinks is installed that is not installed. I can deal with those on a case by case basis I guess.