FC5 rpm database corrupt

[Claude Jones]

On Sunday June 11 2006 20:52, Keith G. Robertson-Turner wrote:
> nigel henry wrote:
>  > Bringing other repo's into the arena can cause problems.
>  > Particularly I'm thinking of livna, and atrpms. I'm not too sure
>  > sure how you can resolve this. I'm not knocking livna or atrpms, but
>  > I think for doing system upgrades with more than one repo open is
>  > asking for trouble. you have to be carefull.
>
> I'd agree that using ATrpm's could be problematic, purely based on the
> fact that Axel seems to duplicate packages already available in
> core/extras/updates. Why he does this, I'm not sure, but it does make
> me very nervous about permanently enabling his repo. Like you, I am
> not knocking ATrpms; just being cautious.
>
> Similarly I would imagine that kde-redhat obsoletes/replaces Core
> packages, which is fine, if changes are properly synchronised with
> package changes in Core Updates (and assuming that all else being
> equal, any given kde-redhat package is not buggy).
>
> Livna OTOH is a different kettle of fish. AFAICT Dams does not
> duplicate anything in Core, etc., and I've had nothing but success
> with his packages. I'm not saying he's perfect, but then even Core
> Updates are subject to errors - look at the recent
> evolution-data-server farce, for evidence of that - nobody's perfect.

Maybe it's my writing. Getting old means getting incoherent??? Anyhow, I 
thought I'd made it clear that I was _not_ using non Fedora repo's with the 
sole exception of Livna and KDE-Redhat. I am in accord with the above 
assessment of Livna and of ATrpms. KDE-Redhat is a different kettle of fish, 
but, there have been almost no significant problems with that project on any 
machine of mine - and I run KDE-Redhat on many machines; Rex Dieter, the main 
maintainer of that project is on the Fedora board - he's not in a combative 
relationship with Fedora - problems occur, but they get fixed very fast. I 
sometimes get packages from other repos, but, those are individual packages 
for which I enable a repo for that one download, and then disable it again.

Craig quibbled with my "extremely conservative" formulation; fair enough, but, 
I would still say, from my own experience with Livna and KDE-Redhat since 
late FC1 days, that I am practicing pretty safe Fedora management. I've 
experimented much more with other machines, and even built some test-beds 
where I've mixed Fedora with Blag and with Smartcom, both Fedora derivatives, 
and I've experimented extensively with source installs, and so forth; I was 
comparing my current practice with those earlier more adventurous machines. 
That's why I'm still baffled by what caused all this. 

Also, to make another point, I don't use Synaptic to maintain FC5; I also 
thought I made that clear. I do use it for diagnostics occasionally - it's 
useful for quickly detecting duplicate packages, for instance. 

I've stuck this problem out, just because I find it more interesting to try 
and fix things than to start over - it's a judgment call, and I've spent a 
lot of time today on the problem, but so far, I don't feel it was wasted. 
I've finally managed to get "rpm -e" to start working and used it to remove 
about 82 multiple versions of various packages; I chose not to remove old and 
new, but only old. That strategy seems to be working. Synaptic is no longer 
seeing multiple versions of packages, so I think I've rid myself of them. Yum 
is still not working quite right. It just supposedly updated bind and the 
kernel and about four other packages, and when it was finished, I came up 
with the same exact packages needing to be updated on the next try...

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA