On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 09:48 -0500, James B. Byrne wrote:

I am running a Xen installation on a Centos-4.4 based test box, my desktop unit, and I am having intermittent problems installing certain pieces of software. Some time back I posted to this list regarding my inability to install Adobe Acrobat on this unit and was advised to essentially repackage the software and try again. This is beyond my present means of knowledge or time to acquire same and so left undone.

Now however I am having remarkably similar problems with two official Centos-4.4 updates, xorg-x11-xfs and openssh-server. Can anybody give me some clues as to what is going on and how I might correct this. I am sure that xen is involved in this somehow because I run four other servers with Centos-4.4 and none of them have displayed this problem.

This is what I am seeing when trying to update via yum:

--->

# yum update openssh-server -y Setting up Update Process Setting up repositories Reading repository metadata in from local files Reducing Dag Wieers RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to included packages only Finished Reducing CentOS-4 Testing to included packages only Finished Reducing CentOS-4 - Plus to included packages only Finished Resolving Dependencies --> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait. ---> Package openssh-server.i386 0:3.9p1-8.RHEL4.17.1 set to be updated --> Running transaction check

Dependencies Resolved

============================================================================= Package Arch Version Repository Size ============================================================================= Updating: openssh-server i386 3.9p1-8.RHEL4.17.1 update 208 k

Transaction Summary

Install 0 Package(s) Update 1 Package(s) Remove 0 Package(s) Total download size: 208 k Downloading Packages: Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction error: %pre(openssh-server-3.9p1-8.RHEL4.17.1.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 255 error: install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping openssh-server-3.9p1-8.RHEL4.17.1

Updated: openssh-server.i386 0:3.9p1-8.RHEL4.17.1 Complete!

# yum update xorg-x11-xfs Setting up Update Process Setting up repositories dag 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 centos-test 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 update 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 centosplus 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 addons 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 Reading repository metadata in from local files primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 1.2 MB 00:27 dag : ################################################## 5225/5225 Added 57 new packages, deleted 376 old in 7.53 seconds primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 32 kB 00:00 extras : ################################################## 124/124 Added 0 new packages, deleted 0 old in 0.15 seconds Reducing Dag Wieers RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to included packages only Finished Reducing CentOS-4 Testing to included packages only Finished Reducing CentOS-4 - Plus to included packages only Finished Resolving Dependencies --> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait. ---> Package xorg-x11-xfs.i386 0:6.8.2-1.EL.13.37.5 set to be updated --> Running transaction check

Dependencies Resolved

============================================================================= Package Arch Version Repository Size ============================================================================= Updating: xorg-x11-xfs i386 6.8.2-1.EL.13.37.5 update 315 k

Transaction Summary

Install 0 Package(s) Update 1 Package(s) Remove 0 Package(s) Total download size: 315 k Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction error: %pre(xorg-x11-xfs-6.8.2-1.EL.13.37.5.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 255 error: install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping xorg-x11-xfs-6.8.2-1.EL.13.37.5

You need to figure out what about the pre script is failing ... here is what is contained in the pre script:

rpm -q --scripts openssh-server

and

rpm -q --scripts xorg-x11-xfs

Then look at the preinstall sections (which looks like what is failing). It seems that the code in question is (for openssh): ------------------------------------------------------ preinstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh): /usr/sbin/useradd -c "Privilege-separated SSH" -u 74 \ -s /sbin/nologin -r -d /var/empty/sshd sshd 2> /dev/null || : ------------------------------------------------------

and for xorg-x11-xfs: ------------------------------------------------------ preinstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh): { # Conditionalized to work on RHL 7.1 and 7.2 which do not have /sbin/nologin LOGINSHELL=$([ -e /sbin/nologin ] && echo /sbin/nologin || echo /bin/false) /usr/sbin/useradd -c "X Font Server" -r -s $LOGINSHELL -u 43 - d /etc/X11/fs xfs || : } &> /dev/null || : # Silence output, and ignore errors (Bug #91822)

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There are a couple things in common here ..

1. They both use useradd ... make sure root can do that where you are getting the error.

2. Both commands direct output to /dev/null ... make sure that exists in the place the installs are happening.

IF this was a chroot and not xen, I would recommend that you ensure that selinux was off in the chroot ... maybe the same applies inside xen clients (I am not sure about that).