Force reinstallation of packages Was: [CentOS] Root-filesystem remounts as read-only during 5.2 upgrade (system completely shoot)

[William L. Maltby]

WARNING! Due to my background, I don't often read man pages like I used
to. So there may be some inaccuracies or ambiguities below.

On Thu, 2008-06-26 at 11:58 +0200, Bernhard Gschaider wrote:
> <snip>

> Sorry. Stupid question again: and if I find inconsistencies, then the

Keep in mind that *some* inconsistencies are expected. Local config
files being one good example. You must look at the codes displayed in
the output, and possibly the files, to be sure it is really a
discrepancy.

> only way to force rpm to correct them yould be something like
> 
> yum remove offendingPackage
> yum install offendingPackage
> 
> or the equivalent rpm-commands?

Not the only way, but probably the safest. However, that may try to also
remove some dependencies, depending on the package you're trying to
remove.

I seem to recall a "force" parameter that is available for rpm and yum.
Although normally disparaged, this is a perfect situation for its use.

> 
> Currently the machine behaves quite strange:
>  - Boots OK
>  - Lets users log in and most applications work
>  - Firefox works only for root
>  - yumex hangs at starting

Depending on your time-frame, this may be a symptom of the load on the
servers you access. Yesterday A.M. I saw *BIG* delays downloading the
xml(?) files. But I use yum CLI, so I see the blood-n-guts on the
screen. <BIAS> GUIs suck... in general</BIAS>

>  - "man rpm" says XXX WARNING: old character encoding and/or character set
> 
> All this leads me to the conclusion that there are only some selected
> packages corrupt (and I don't want to reinstall the machine). Would
> Installing/Repairing from DVD help?

Maybe. But some of the rpms might be on your system from the update
activities. Do and updatedb and then a locate .rpm. You may see some
in /var/cache/yum. Subdirs under it might have what you need.

> 
> Bernhard
> <snip>

HTH
-- 
Bill