Hi there,
I installed FC4 many months ago and I am now trying to update all the package I have installed.
I am using the command: "yum -y update" and I get A LOT of conflicts output and no update could be done. Most of the conflicts comes from KDE and Gnome. I tried to update some packages by hand but when I tried to update the KDE and Gnome ones I could not resolve the conflicts (even if I put the -t tolerant option).

Here is only some of the conflicts I have (put all of them would be crazy):
...
file /usr/share/gnome/help/fish-applet-2/it/fish-applet-2.xml from install of gnome-panel-2.10.1-10.2 conflicts with file from package gnome-panel-2.8.1-3
file /usr/share/gnome/help/window-list/it/figures/window_list_applet.png from install of gnome-panel-2.10.1-10.2 conflicts with file from package gnome-panel-2.8.1-3
...
file /usr/share/apps/kwin/plastik.desktop from install of kdebase-3.5.1-0.1.fc4 conflicts with file from package kdebase-3.4.0-5
file /usr/share/apps/kwin/quartz.desktop from install of kdebase-3.5.1-0.1.fc4 conflicts with file from package kdebase-3.4.0-5
...
...
...

Do you have any workaround?
Is it normal to have that enormous amount of conflicts? I though that yum updates was an really easy way to manage updates!!

Thanks,
Mat

It sounds like you added one or more packages from outside the fedora lineage (e.g., FreshRPMS, DAG, etc.) and brought along some packages causing conflicts.

If yes, then you need to include that repository in your yum configuration.

Try doing,
If that still fails to sort out the problem, you could do "init 3" as root and drop into a terminal. Uninstall the offending packages by doing
Once thats done, do

yum update gives me the same conflicts.

I don't know what happened because I didn't include any other packages except k3b that I installed by using the command:
yum install k3b

I have a lot of other conflicts for a lot of packages... do I need to uninstall all of them and reinstall them?

Do you want I post my yum.repos.d content?

Thanks,
Mathieu

Another thing...
I though that yum could handle the dependencies.

But I tried that:
1) yum update -y x*
And I got this error:
Transaction Check Error: file /usr/lib64/libxfcegui4.so from install of libxfcegui4-4.2.3-2.fc4 conflicts with file from package libxfcegui4-devel-4.0.6-1

2) yum update -y libxfcegui*
Then it update all the dependencies correctly.

3) yum update -y x*
No error!!


I don't understand why yum wasn't able to solve the dependencies of the package libxfcegui at first??

Thanks

The problem here is that you are upgrading to major revisions, so if files have been shifted around conflicts can arise. Use "yum upgrade" not "yum update" and most conflicts will be sorted out. If that doesn't happen, then one solution is the one I posted above, i.e. remove all the installed packages that are causing the conflicts. Another one would be to remove all of KDE and XFCE4 and install afresh using yum.

Thanks for the answers

I tried "yum upgrade" and got the same conflicts again.
As I told you, I got A LOT of conflicts, it will take me many days to resolve all of them by removing the specific package then reinstall it (you know that it is not fast to do it one at the time). Even if I resolve the ones that are shown in the output, new ones appear after that when I relaunch the general update.

It doesn't have any fast way to tell to yum to remove the package and reinstall it when it cannot resolve the conflicts?

Thanks again!

It’s often faster to do a fresh FC reinstallation than it is to fix a system with serious problems.

Besides, it gives you a chance to change the things you don’t like about the way you did the original installation.

Be sure to backup /etc for later use when reconfiguring the new installation and backup any critical user files. Or if you don’t already have one, this would be a great time to buy an external USB drive and copy the entire current installation onto it before you reinstall.

But this won't solve my problem...
I have installed few months ago FC4 and the new release of Fedora is not available yet.
I will still have to update all the packages again if I want to be up-to-date and get the same conflicts.

Thanks,
Mat

Did you expect to only install FC4 one time?

FC4 is not a stable distribution and is not intended to be one. Several of my systems running FC4 have had at least one reinstallation and with the damage done by the kernel-2.6.15-1.1830_FC4 / udev-071-0.FC4.2 combination, several more will likely be reinstalled in the near future.

Reinstalling FC is not something you should try to avoid. Most of us put up with the problems we can’t fix that develop over time until we hit one that is somewhat hard to ignore. That’s what usually triggers a reinstallation.

Besides, if you are trying to learn linux and you aren’t doing something on a monthly basis that trashes your system, then you aren’t learning much and probably need to consider moving to a somewhat technically less demanding and somewhat more stable distro like SUSE 10 or openSUSE 10. And that suggestion isn’t intended to be insulting, or I would have suggested Linspire.

Which, if any, extra repositories have you added to yum? I haven't had any problems yet and have had it for awhile now. I added Dries, FreshRPMs.

I suspect its the repos as well. Usually an upgrade doesn't cause so many conflicts.

I need to tell you that I am not familiar with the yum updates...
So, I went to a website where it told me how to change the repos to get most of the updates.
It suggests how to add atrpms, dag, newrpms, freshrpms, livna and dries as well. But I am not sure exactly what they refer to and if everything worked well but when I did "yum update-check" everything looked fine.

I am a bit stupid because I did not keep any backup for my old repos.

Thanks,
Mat

livna conflicts with several of the other repositories, so I hope you didn't enable all of those at once!

Yes, they are all enabled.
I though that the more repository you put, more package available you have. Why it could exist conflicts when you add another repository? They do not have the same version of package available?