[CentOS] Yum update wants to overwrite newer app package

Fri Dec 14 03:44:56 UTC 2007
Garrick Staples <garrick at usc.edu>

On Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 07:07:12PM -0800, MHR alleged:
> On Dec 13, 2007 6:31 PM, Kai Schaetzl <maillists at conactive.com> wrote:
> > Mhr wrote on Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:45:34 -0800:
> >
> > > If that's true, doesn't it break some kind of unwritten rule to
> supersede newer software from an OEM source with older software that has
> been rebuilt?
> >
> > I'm just "reading by" but if I understood you correctly you installed a
> > 32bit rpm of the 2.3 version (which you missed to tell from the beginning)
> > and now yum wants to "update" to a 2.0.4 64bit rpm version.
> > I think you missed a vital point - there's no connection
> > between the 32bit and 64bit packages, it will never attempt to "update" a
> > 32bit package to 64bit. What actually happens is that it updates the
> > installed older 64bit package to the newer one. It doesn't matter at all
> > if you have a 32bit version installed or not. It's just a mystery why
> > those packages are not shown in your rpm -qa run. But it's clear that
> > yum thinks they are installed.
> >
> Interesting points, but not the one I was aiming at.
> 
> My point was that the 2.3.1 version from OOo is newer than the 2.0.4 version
> from CentOS (although there is an epoch difference which makes the CentOS
> version look newer), and it is modified from the original 2.0.4 OOo
> distribution in that the one that comes with CentOS is a 64-bit package.
> 
> IOW, the CentOS distribution is modified from the original that came from
> OOo, but it is still an older revision than the newest one from OOo.
> 
> Shouldn't it be the case that a newer revision is NOT updated with an older
> one, epochs notwithstanding (is the epoch an OOo thing or a CentOS thing?)
> when the old revision's newer release is still a rebuild of an older
> revision?
> 
> (Is this getting too convoluted?  I wouldn't think so, but....)
> 
> What do you CentOS folks think?

Epoch is an rpm thing.  It is used to force upgrades.  It is generally
discouraged because, as you are seeing, it causes a lot of confusion.

You may notice that many packages in the distro have an epoch.  Each one was
added for a specific need, and is now stuck forever:
$ rpm -qa --qf '%{NAME}-%{EPOCH}:%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n' | grep -v '(none)'

The CentOS package (or rather, the Upstream Linux Vendor's package) has an
epoch of 1.  At some point in the past, there was a very good reason why
someone added it.

At this point, the solution is to just exclude it from the CentOS repos in your
yum config.

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