Yum: phantom dependencies in Centos 5

paradad · 06-02-2009, 05:36 AM

Hi all,

The intro stuff:
I've been using SunOS for years then one day I got a computer at home... and now I have three. One server running Centos and two desktops with Ubuntu (one carrying mythtv).

And so to the problem:

I've hit problems installing various packages (esp. multimedia) on centos 5 using Yum. E.g. following yum update:

Code:

...
Error: Missing Dependency: libx264.so.55 is needed by package gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.8-2.el5.rf.i386 (installed)
# locate libx264.so.55
/usr/lib/libx264.so.55

I've hit these phantom dependencies before. Some bugs reported on bugzilla seem to be similar but could this simply be down to conflicting version/repos? I'm inferring as much from the solution proposed by this chap:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archiv.../t-176571.html because I've hit this problem a lot.

I am going to review my setup with this in mind will post back later but would really like to hear suggestions from anyone with more experience of linux - esp using yum. (apt is SO much better!!)

Matir · 06-04-2009, 08:42 PM

Have you installed any software from source or anything along those lines? Sometimes the "manual" creation of a file causes problems. (The package manager isn't aware of it, so thinks it's still missing.)

paradad · 06-05-2009, 08:19 AM

Thanks for your reply and apologies for the delayed response - I lost access to the forum while I rebuilt this machine.

Anyway... To cut a long story short I've reinstalled Centos 5 and reconfigured yum. The first thing I did post-install was to install yum-priorities, then configure the it with the following repos:
+ Centos: main, base, extras :: priority 1
+ CentOS-Media.repo :: priority 2
+ rpmforge :: priority 20
+ adobe-linux-i386 :: priority 30

I have installed all the good media stuff and all seems tickety-boo

Previously I had google and atrpms repos enabled. I *suspect* that atrpm was conflicting with rpmforge and or Centos-Media because the problems I had were largely with media based libraries.

I will be going back to atrpms for Mythtv packages later but when I do I'll be a bit more specific about what I'm picking up from each repo.

It's not terribly scientific but I think I can mark this one down as solved.

Incidentally the reason for the rebuild was because in trying to resolve any conflicts I removed all the packages not in my yum.conf file with a view to re-installing them later. Unfortunately that included all the stuff from the CD installation. That'll teach me to have a brilliant idea and not think hard about what I'm doing first...!

unSpawn · 06-05-2009, 11:52 AM

Not showing any disrespect for their efforts but I have had trouble always using that repo. I think it boils down to a simple choice: Pepsi or Coca Cola, Megadeth or Metallica, Beethoven or Brahms, Centos, RPMForge, EPEL plus RPMFusion or ATrpms plus wailing and gnashing of teeth ;-p

paradad · 06-06-2009, 03:34 AM

LOL! Very nicely put!! I'll take a look at those other repos too, many thanks for the info. What a great forum!