[CentOS] yum hangs and results in problems

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 24 May 2018, Gary Stainburn wrote:

> Questions
>
> 1) Any ideas why my yum runs keep hanging, and what I can do to fix it?

It's likely it's hanging in a script, so just trace it all through.  yum will
start other processes up, and one of those will have hung.  It'll be called
/tmp/rpm-script.XXXX or similar, I forget.

Killing that process doesn't cause the world to end, and  you can debug what
failed there later by taking a note of the rpm that's being updated, and
looking at the script later.

> 2) How do I go about fixing the problems listed above?

Don't kill yum in the middle of a run if you can possibly avoid it.

I always favour "package-cleanup --cleandupes --removenewestdupes"

But right now, the problem is you're part way between updated and not.

You can be more brutal than package-cleanup or yum are willing to be.

You can fix this with yum shell, telling it what you're going to remove and
what you're going to add to put it back in a consistent state.  That's
probably the best way of doing it.

The more manual way is for each of those listed, use rpm to see what's really
installed.  If you've got a duplicate, aim to remove the newest package.  If
it says it's not possible, look what you need to do to make it consistent, and
use --nodeps if necessary.  Then do a yum upgrade when you're done.

Yours doesn't look that bad.

jh