[CentOS] Upgrade 3.4 --> 3.7 went awry: rpmdb hosed

Matt Hyclak hyclak at math.ohiou.edu
Fri Jul 7 11:13:05 UTC 2006


On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 05:40:10PM -0700, Bart Schaefer enlightened us:
> I installed CentOS 3.4 from a CD image I'd burned a while ago, and
> then attempted to update with yum to 3.7.  All the packages installed
> OK, but at the very end of final cleanup I got an error message from
> db4 saying to "RUN RECOVERY".
> 
> I did "rpm --rebuilddb" which may have been the wrong thing -- it
> issued an error about "pages missing".  I then ran it again, and it
> came back with no errors, but after rebooting (for the kernel update)
> "rpm -qa" lists only a dozen packages or so, of which "rpm" is not
> one, and "yum check-update" chokes, showing Null for $releasever and
> the empty string for $basearch.
> 
> This was a brand-new system, so I'm thinking I'll just download the
> 3.7 ISOs and re-install, but on the off chance there's some other way
> to recover from this I thought I'd ask.  There doesn't seem to be
> anything missing other than a large chunk of the RPM database itself.

Coincidentally, there is a thread regarding this happening right now over on
the nahant mailing list:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-list/2006-July/msg00011.html

Matt

-- 
Matt Hyclak
Department of Mathematics 
Department of Social Work
Ohio University
(740) 593-1263



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