[CentOS] Interesting update problem

I had problems updating a 7.6 machine to 7.7, so I reinstalled it from scratch and applied all the 7.6 updates, then attempted the 7.7 upgrade again. It failed with the same errors. I'm wondering where the problem is?

# yum update
...
[hundreds of lines of the next line]
warning: Unable to get systemd shutdown inhibition lock
Error in PRETRANS scriptlet in rpm package 1:java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless-1.8.0.222.b10-1.el7_7.x86_64
Error in PRETRANS scriptlet in rpm package 1:java-11-openjdk-headless-11.0.4.11-1.el7_7.x86_64
Error in PRETRANS scriptlet in rpm package kmod-kvdo-6.1.2.41-5.el7.x86_64
mesa-libEGL-devel-18.3.4-5.el7.x86_64 was supposed to be installed but is not!
  Verifying  : mesa-libEGL-devel-18.3.4-5.el7.x86_64                                                     1/3285 
[repeating for dozens or hundreds of other packages]
...
Failed:

[list of all upgrade packages]

Of course mesa-libEGL-devel-18.3.4-5.el7.x86_64 is not installed, that's the new version. The installed version is mesa-libEGL-devel-18.0.5-4.el7_6.x86_64.

Where did it all go wrong? I tried clearing the yum cache and rebuilding the rpm db, no joy.

Another 7.6 machine upgraded fine, although from a smaller installed package set.