Hi,

I'm trying to install a package yum install zlib-devel on my environment, but it declines stating that 3 pre-existing rpmdb problems with the following packages:

You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
** Found 3 pre-existing rpmdb problem(s), 'yum check' output follows:
freetype-2.8-12.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with freetype-2.4.11-15.el7.i686
libdrm-2.4.91-3.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with libdrm-2.4.74-1.el7.i686
libuuid-2.23.2-59.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with libuuid-2.23.2-43.el7_4.2.i686

Does anyone know on how to solve this problem? Thank you.

The internet offers a few suggestions what to do in this situation. For example https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...duplicate-with, which I found by googling for "yum check" error.

You need to check whether the solutions offered under this link fit your particular configuration.

Link: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/38644

First, I bolded a line in what you posted for emphasis...did you read/try that??? And what is the WHOLE output of your "yum install zlib-devel" command? That package is available from the RHEL repositories, and may even be on the installation media. You shouldn't get ANY broken dependencies, unless you're not paying for RHEL (ARE YOU??), and don't have access to the RHEL repositories.

If you're not paying for RHEL, there's little sense in using it...CentOS is totally free, and 99.x% identical to RHEL, and you won't have those issue.

@TB0ne,
I do agree with you, but personally, I wouldn't try that option(--skip-broken or --nodeps) with yum (or zypper/apt/rpm) without trying to fix the rpmdb issue first.

I do concur that not all dependencies are real/required/deal-breakers, but that is to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

The OP should have done some homework before posting. This is a pretty common issue (more of a small nuisance really!!) in RHEL/CentOS. Sometimes this error can be reproduced by killing a running yum update. (Of course, killing a running update may introduce other nasties !)

When updating RHEL say once a month (or more often) the version will now show RHEL 7.6 .

Waiting too long with {updates / package installs} the action will sometimes fail.
The old (unsafe) 7.1 = year 2015.

Suggest : Install RHEL 7.6 .... or the free version = "Redhat CentOS 7.5" →
http://ftp.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/pub/m...stall-1804.iso


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I agree, and this points to the OP trying to use yum to install a manually-downloaded package, versus doing it from repositories alone. That would fix the dependencies, since the updated packages would get installed during the system update.
Indeed. OP, again: are you PAYING for RHEL? If you're not, as said before (and echoed by knudfl), you really should use CentOS instead, and let yum do what it was designed to do.