Fedora Core 3
Synaptic 0.55.3

When I run Synaptic, I get the warning message:
=======================================================
"There are multiple versions of "pam" in your system.

This package won't be cleanly updated, unless you leave only one version. To leave multiple versions installed, you may remove that warning by setting the following
option in your configuration file:
RPM::Allow-Duplicated { "^pam$"; };
To disable these warnings completely set:
RPM::Allow-Duplicated-Warning "false";
=======================================================

After clicking OK, I get a string of similar messages for various packages (I have copied pasted 'some' of them below.)

I then click on Mark All Upgrades (and use the Smart Upgrade feature) and Synaptic seems to do something ... but the Apply button stays greyed out. Some of the packages are marked 'green' and when I right click, only two options are available: Mark for removal or Mark for complete removal. If I choose one of these, the apply button becomes active.

I am worried about marking these for removal and then running Synaptic and damaging my install. Am I 'safe' to let Synaptic 'remove' the packages that are hi-lited in green?

An additional items: in the Gnome menu bar, the update icon is a blue background with a checkmark.


=======================================================
Some of the other additional warnings message:
=======================================================
There are multiple versions of "sysklogd" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "iptables" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "mikmod" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11-font-utils"
in your system.

There are multiple versions of "gaim" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11-tools" in
your system.

There are multiple versions of "libselinux" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "rhpl" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "libtiff" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "bind-utils" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "vixie-cron" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "curl" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "samba-common" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of
"system-config-securitylevel" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "system-config-date" in
your system.There are multiple versions of
"initscripts" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "sound-juicer" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "gtksourceview" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "hwbrowser" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "tzdata" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "python" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "krb5-libs" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "shadow-utils" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "libpng" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "dbus-glib" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "gstreamer" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "procps" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "wireless-tools" in
your system.

There are multiple versions of "redhat-menus" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "net-tools" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "gphoto2" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "Omni" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "vim-enhanced" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "words" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "squid" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "rsh" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "NetworkManager" in
your system.


There are multiple versions of "spamassassin" in your
system.


There are multiple versions of "ipsec-tools" in your
system.

There arThere are multiple versions of "nfs-utils" in
your system.

There multiple versions of "prelink" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "man" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "gamin" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "elinks" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "dbus-python" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11-libs" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "httpd" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11-Mesa-libGLU"
in your system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11" in your
system.


There are multiple versions of "gnome-media" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "system-config-display"
in your system.

There are multiple versions of "mod_ssl" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "firefox" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11-twm" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "bash" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "slang" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "vim-minimal" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "file" in your system.

There are multiple versions of "policycoreutils" in
your system.

There are multiple versions of "xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL"
in your system.

There are multiple versions of "jwhois" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "libxml2" in your
system.

There are multiple versions of "bind-libs" in your
system.

Plus 42 (or so) other similar warning message

The command: apt-get update

may have solved this issue.

This problem has returned. When I run Synaptic, I get these "multiple version" warnings.

Any advice on how to fix this?

Thanks,

Not sure if this information helps or not but thought it might -

I ran the following command in terminal mode:

rpm -qa |grep iptables

and received the following back:

iptables-1.2.11-3.1
iptables-1.2.11-3.1.FC3

the command: rpm -qa |grep sysklogd

returned:

sysklogd-1.4.1-22
sysklogd-1.4.1-26_FC3


the command: rpm -qa |grep pam

returned several lines - the two that appeared as duplicates were:

pam-0.77-65
pam-0.77-66.2

and

spamassassin-3.0.0-3
spamassassin-3.0.1-0.FC3

similar rpm commands gave back:

mikmod-3.1.6-30
mikmod-3.1.6-30.2

gaim-1.0.1-3
gaim-1.1.2-0.FC3

xorg-x11-font-utils-6.8.1-12
xorg-x11-font-utils-6.8.1-12.FC3.21

and on and on.

Just remove the older packages and for those that are slightly similar, remove the one without the "-FC3" (no justification for this, but I have seen newer packages on core 3 labelled this way).

I went in to Synaptic and Completely Uninstalled the packages that seemed older versions.

I did this as a two step process - on packages where the uninstall gave me some kind of warning about "removal could cause the system to stop working" - I did not initially uninstall these packages.

After removing a lot of packages on the first run and being successful, I got braver and did the second set.

All seems to be working well.

Ever since I removed duplicate packages, when I run Synaptic - Smart upgrade - there are never any packages to upgrade.


The Task Bar show 50 updates if I went the Launch up2date route ... but I would prefer to use Synaptic.

So ... what troubleshooting steps can people recommend to determine why I don't receive any updates?

Thank you.