I run Centos 5.7 64 bit and I needed to install pcre so I did:

"yum install pcre"

and it installed the 32 bit version - pcre.i386.

Well I wanted the 64 bit so I went to remove the previous so I did what made sense:

"yum remove pcre"

All of a sudden yum went bonkers and started making all sorts of packages "set to be erased"

By the time I looked up it showed this:

Transaction Summary
==============================================================================================Remove 438 Package(s)
Reinstall 0 Package(s)
Downgrade 0 Package(s)

Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test

I interrupted it after 3-5 seconds or so of the "Running Transaction Test"

I then installed the 64 bit version via:

"yum install pcre.x86_64"

and it installed fine.

I don't believe anything was actually removed but I am not sure. My version of yum does not support the "history" function.

Anyone have any thoughts about this? Why would it install a package using "pcre" but then remove a whole bunch of stuff when removing "pcre". I understand that was a mistake and I should have entered the package name specifically, but holy cow that scared the crap out of me and I am still worried.

Any insight is appreciated.

Ordinarily, yum will ask for confirmation after the "transaction check" but before removing any packages.

Ref. post #2 : That's right, only # yum -y remove pcre
.. will remove pcre and and packages depending on pcre.

# yum remove pcre.i386 : Removes 3..7 packages. If you type y.
# yum remove pcre.x86_64 : Removes 910 packages. (y)

# yum remove pcre : Removes both versions, and 915 other packages.
(The above package counts are examples from one of my CentOS 5 installs.)

.

Hmmm I just did a "yum update" on my home server and it prompted me with y/n to update some things.

I did the same on my main server in question here and it did not prompt me and just updated a few things... Why wouldn't it prompt for a y/n? This means it wouldn't have done such for remove. In the above experience it never got past the transaction check so I should be ok right? How do I turn on prompts? Is there a reason to not have them on? Thanks.

Ugh ok I just looked at the yum config and it has in it:

assumeyes=1

Why would this be in there? I'm pretty pissed and worried now...

I have never seen CentOS use assumeyes by default.
So somebody has set it that way, why is any body's guess.

IMHO disabling confirmation in a config file like that is a bad idea. If for some reason you did want to disable confirmation for a particular instance of the command, you can use "yum -y". If say you were running it from a script for some reason.

I disabled it. I ran a test on another system and as long as you interrupt during "Running Transaction Test" you're ok. No packages get removed.

Hi All,

Unfortunately, I had the same problem and didn't catch it until after it had already removed some 300 packages. Now I'm stuck. Most BASH commands don't work, though I can still navigate. Python and Yum both seem to be non-functional. wget, curl, rpm, ftp aren't working. I'm logged in, but can't log in with a new terminal, all new connections are refused. Any recommendations on how to go about recovering remotely. Is this an OS reinstall situation? My web and database servers are still up and running, but I think any reboot would mean the end of it all. Any thoughtful feedback appreciated. I'm having sinking feelings... :-(

walt