[CentOS] Why is yum not liked by some?

[Greg Knaddison]

On 9/7/05, Dave Gutteridge <dave at tokyocomedy.com> wrote:
> >Can you please post RAM/CPU, specific version of operating system, and
> >the result of "yum list updates" if it does complete?
> >
> >
> 512MB Ram, Pentium3, 500Mhz.

Ok, this should be fine.

> 
> [root at localhost ~]# yum list updates
> Setting up Repos
> addons                    100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> kbs-CentOS-Extras         100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> kbs-CentOS-Misc           100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> update                    100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> dag                       100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
> base                      100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
> freshrpms                 100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> extras                    100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
> Reading repository metadata in from local files
> kbs-CentOS: ################################################## 1572/1572
> kbs-CentOS: ################################################## 61/61
> primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================|  49 kB    00:00
> MD Read   : ################################################## 124/124
> update    : ################################################## 124/124
> dag       : ################################################## 2458/2458
> base      : ################################################## 1406/1406
> primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================|  98 kB    00:01
> MD Read   : ################################################## 326/326
> freshrpms : ################################################## 326/326
> extras    : ################################################## 32/32
> Excluding Packages in global exclude list
> Finished
> 

So, looks like you have nothing to update, right?  So yum must work
well enough that you can update your system :)

> >"antiquated" really needs to be old for it to not work with yum.
> >
> That's good to know. I don't think my computer is "antiquated", although
> it is getting long in the tooth.
> It would be nice to clear this detail up.

Your machine seems like it should be fine - I agree it's only a little
old, but should be fine in terms of speed if none of the hardware is
just flat failing.

> Two more details:
> Yum usually works fine for the first little while after I start the
> computer. When it freezes, it usually occurs after the computer has been
> on for a while, or if I've run YUM a couple of time, say, searching for
> a particular package.
> I also keep getting this annoying error message:
> /sbin/ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libk3bdevice.so.2.0.0.#prelink#.X8kEMh is
> empty, not checked.
> I tried turning "prelinking" off by editing a file... though I can't
> remember off hand which file that was right now. It was weeks ago, and
> it didn't help anyway. The error still happens now and again.
> 

Generally speaking, running yum several times a day shouldn't just
cause problems on it's own.  However, if you frequently are searching,
it can be handy to do a "yum list installed > YumInstalled.txt" and
"yum list available > YumAvailable.txt" and then do a grep on the
resulting text files rather than starting/re-running yum each time. 
Also, if you feel like upgrading to yum2.4 then yum should be faster
and you can use the yum shell to do your searching in a more efficient
manner.

Maciej says to delete your prelink file - I don't know enough to know
if that will help, but as far as I can see you don't have a specific
problem per se, just that yum is slow which has been addressed in 2.4
and can also be worked around.

Greg