Dealing with 94 rpmnew files on new FC4 install after yum update

[Paul Howarth]

On Fri, 2006-05-05 at 05:19 -0700, Roger wrote:
> Paul Howarth wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 15:13 -0700, Roger wrote:
> >   
> >> I have just installed FC4 on a new PC and ran yum update.  The yum 
> >> update created 94 .rpmnew files.  Most of these end with .conf.rpmnew 
> >> and the others end with /config/xxxxx.rpmnew.
> >>
> >> I understand these to be application configuration files that were not 
> >> installed by yum because there may have been local customizations.  In 
> >> normal circumstances, I should review each .rpmnew file against its 
> >> counterpart and determine if if the configuration files can be swapped 
> >> by renaming or if the .rpmnew file must first be edited.  However, at 
> >> least a few of the .rpmnew files seem to be binary and I do not know the 
> >> function of each application that has an .rpmnew file.
> >>
> >> Because this is a new installation (I have customized my monitor 
> >> settings and made a static IP address), a guess is that I just want all 
> >> the .rpmnew files installed -- and maybe the existing files renamed to 
> >> .rpmold just in case.  Is there an installation option that I missed or 
> >> is there a cleanup script somewhere to deal with this problem?  Would 
> >> use of smart (or apt) instead of yum have resulted in fewer problems?
> >>     
> >
> > Are you by any chance using x86_64 and are many of these files
> > associated with packages that you have both .x86_64 and .i386 versions
> > installed? A common cause of spurious .rpmnew file generation is when
> > multiple packages own the same config file (as is the case described
> > above, and also for example /etc/vimrc).
> >
> > Paul.
> >
> >   
> Yes, I am using x86_64 and the rpmnew files seem to be consistent with 
> packages that have .i386 versions.  I tried removing a few 
> (alsa-lib.i386, apr.i386, and SDL.i386) and yum showed no dependencies 
> and removed them.  When I entered a remove command for the x86_64 
> counterparts, yum showed many dependencies so I did not remove them. 
> 
> So now the question is why do I have these .386 versions and is it a 
> good idea to remove them all?

I suspect they were installed by anaconda but other than that I can't
say much; I don't currently have an x86_64 box myself so I'm not up on
the gory details of what's needed and what's not.

> I should note that I am trying to install MythTV and after the initial 
> yum update I added atrpms as a yum repository.  atrpms seems to be a bit 
> flakey (sometimes there and sometimes not), but I think all the rpmnew 
> files predated my adding atrpms as a repository.  I could do a clean 
> install again to verify that as I am having trouble getting lirc to 
> install correctly.

What problems are you having exactly?

Paul.