Hi all,

New to OpenSUSE here (but not to Linux) and getting an error when I try to run the "Software Management" module of Yast:

Error: Another process is accessing the package database. Package management cannot be used now.

I killed the software updater that sits in the system tray, to no avail, and I can't think of anything else that would be accessing the 'package database'.

As I say, I'm new to OpenSUSE, so I may be missing something completely obvious.

Thanks in advance

odevans

Some additional info:

Rebooting 3 times cured the problem (temporarily, at least). Restarting X (with a ctrl-alt-backspace) doesn't seem to have an effect.

This has happened a couple of times now, and an arbitrary number of reboots removes the error.

As I said before, I'm new to openSUSE and am relativley ignorant of what's going on. Could any more experienced users shed some light on what may be causing this error and what I can do to fix it (other than rebooting)?

Cheers,

odevans

The FAQ's at opensuse-community.org have the recommendation to remove Zen Management in nearly all their how to's. This substitutes the OpenSuSE Updater applet for the Zen Updater and lets you just use YaST Software Management to get your updates and install new software, and Online Update for your Novell system patches.

I've taken to unchecking the Zen Management pattern when installing OpenSuSE as that thing, even with its latest bug fixes, is incredibly slow and doesn't allow as much control over non-automatic resolving of dependencies. YaST will allow you to adjust things until all is resolved whereas the Zen installer would just error on it and fail to carry out the installs if it couldn't resolve stuff automatically.

So head on over there and read some of their guides. You'll see what to do to get rid of Zen and to install some nice multimedia stuff.

To update all your software, besides the Novell updates that OpenSuSE Updater checks for, in YaST Software Management change the dropdown to packages, scroll down to zzz_all, then on the right pane right click one of the onces checked and choose All in this list - Update all with newer versions available. That'll get you what Zen Updater used to get you, with the exception of the Novell Patches that you access through Online Update instead of Software Management.

Then you scroll through the list to make sure you want the updates that have that update icon. Whatever you don't want, you just click the icon until it changes to the blue "keep" checkmark. Then you click the dependency check and if all's okay click Accept and your software will be downloaded and updated.

Once you remove Zen, this problem you're having likely won't occur anymore.

I have the same error with Yast on occassion and haven't figured out what triggers it. I'll look in the Zen thing but in the meantime if I reboot it seems to clear itself. It's annoying but hasn't slowed me down much. I still think Suse 10.2 is a great distro.

Good luck, (and if you find what's causing remember to update this thread with your findings)
FJD

If you are using opensuseupdater (the KDE updater instead of zen-updater), when it refreshes it accesses the RPM database, so you will be unable to use software management. This happens more often when I boot the PC, for example.

Thanks dahveed.

I spent some time yesterday afternoon reading through a fair amount of documentation and decided to take your advice. I removed ZMD et al with the instructions from http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources/10.2

I'm now using the opensuseupdater tool, guess I'll see how it goes.

Also, in my searches, I came across an email from (presumably) one of the OpenSUSE devs stating that ZMD will not be included in 10.3 (lost the link, GIYF).

Again, thanks to all for responding.

cheers,
odevans

Hi. I'm having the same problem. I'm by no means at all new to Linux, however, I am fairly new to SuSE. I've been running SuSE since I purchased the 10.0 retail, right when it came out (well, I believe I may have done some kind of trail first-or read something. Either way I knew I fell in love with it quickly).

This is one of the two things I hate about SuSE... It's reliance on rpm's. RPM's make upgrading extremely painful in comparison to .debs. RPM's also use CPIO instead of tar. And then, naturally, problems like this!

Anyways, my guess is that somewhere theres a temp file saying that the rpm database is in use, when it's not. Anybody have any suggestions? I can't install or uninstall anything at the moment..

Okay, so basically what was happening for me, and probably for you too, is that, as somebody already stated, ZEN is at fault. According to http://opensuse-community.org/FAQ#ZM...should_I_do.3F :

According to this second paragraph, that is our problem. The code they, however, say to execute did not work for me. I used ksysguard as root and manually killed the processes zmd, zypper, zen, or anything related. All good now! Now, off to remove ZEN....