But before I try that, I'm wondering, shouldn't it be easy
from the error message to simply understand what package is creating the problem?
It turns out it's not sa-update specifically doing this, but the restart of spamassassin itself:
/etc/init.d/spamassassin condrestart
Stopping spamd: [ OK ] Starting spamd: Subroutine Net::DNS::Resolver::Base::AF_INET6 redefined
at
/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/Exporter.pm line 65. at
/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi/Net/DNS/Resolver/Base.pm
line 66 [ OK ]
I've ensured that my spamassassin, perl-Net-DNS and per-IO-Socket-INET6 packages are all from the CentOS repo, so is it just a crap shoot to find what is causing this? I'd expect the error message to be more helpful than that...
Recap on my versions:
perl-IO-Socket-INET6-2.51-2.fc6 perl-Net-DNS-0.59-3.el5 spamassassin-3.3.1-2.el5
In fact, it was suggested on the spamassassin list that version 0.59-3.el5 is vastly out of date and known to be buggy and, contrary to the suggestion here of ensuring I prioritize CentOS repos, I would be better served to get the newer version of per-Net-DNS from the RepoForge (extras) repository.
Other thoughts (on this or my main question in my last email above) would be greatly appreciated.
RHEL (and therefore CentOS) is designed to work with items that it uses as dependencies.
<snip>
If you know what you are doing and understand how to validate the dependency trees, check for repo closure, etc ... then upgrading items to newer versions is fine. If you do not know how to do that, then you end up with a hot pile of mess and eventually an unusable system.
I understand, and I agree. My strongest desire is to stay away from all this manual manipulation. But (see above) I *AM* using the newest spamassassin and per-Net-DNS (where the error is happening?) packages from the CentOS repo, so why in the world are they not working together?? That's the kicker. What else can I do if CentOS provides buggy packages?
I don't know what is causing your specific issue ... whether you are getting something newer in sa-update than is designed to work with CentOS (sa-update bypasses the normal rpm type updates and does updates from elsewhere). It should only update rules, so maybe some of the new rules require a new version of perl-Net-DNS. If that is the case, then a Red Hat bugzilla entry needs to be made.
See above - it's the spamassassin restart that causes the error, in the end, nothing really to do with sa-update.
If it will not work with the CentOS version of perl-Net-DNS and if it works with the rfx version, then obviously you would run that. If that is the case, we need to get the rhel one upgraded.
So maybe I *do* need to open a bug report? Where do I do that?