yum updates corrupting rpmdb

[Joe Smith]

Craig White wrote:
> ...
>> Is there some "run recovery" that's different than --rebuilddb?
> ----
> no but perhaps your /dev/sdb7 has some corruption itself.
> 
> You might try something like 'shutdown now -Fr' to force an fsck on
> reboot

Thanks for the suggestion, but no, it checks clean. Badblocks comes up 
clean also.

I tried dropping to single user to run fsck, but couldn't unmount /var. 
There were no open files on it, so maybe it's connected to whatever was 
preventing yum from being killed; maybe a database block was locked or 
something, I don't know.

It could be last time, because I rebuilt the database before I rebooted, 
there was still this strange problem with the partition, so maybe the 
database still was not clean.

So, I rebooted to single-user; rpm --rebuilddb; yum clean all

Now rpm is working again, but yum reports no updates are available, even 
though there are packages announced for updates that should apply to me:

# yum list firefox gnome-python2, ...
Installed Packages
autofs.i386          1:5.0.2-17             installed
firefox.i386         2.0.0.10-2.fc8         installed
gnome-python2.i386   2.20.0-1.fc8           installed
lftp.i386            3.5.14-2.fc8           installed
libshout.i386        2.2.2-1.fc6            installed
libsoup.i386         2.2.103-1.fc8          installed
nspluginwrapper.i386 0.9.91.5-12.fc8        installed
system-config-firewall.noarch  1.0.11-1.fc8 installed

Yet, todays update annoucements list:

[SECURITY] Fedora 8 Update: autofs-5.0.2-20  updates
Fedora 8 Update: firefox-2.0.0.10-3.fc8  updates
Fedora 8 Update: gnome-python2-2.20.1-1.fc8  updates
Fedora 8 Update: lftp-3.5.14-3.fc8  updates
Fedora 8 Update: libshout-2.2.2-2.fc8  updates
Fedora 8 Update: libsoup-2.2.104-1.fc8  updates
Fedora 8 Update: nspluginwrapper-0.9.91.5-13.fc8  updates
Fedora 8 Update: system-config-firewall-1.0.12-2.fc8  updates

So it looks like all these packages should be upgraded, but yum says no.

I remember at least a few of those being in the update list before yum 
went berserk, so something sure looks off-track here.

What could cause that? Maybe the updates have not reached the mirrors 
yet? Surely yum doesn't depend on that to determine what upgrades are 
available.

Hmm... out of desperation, I ran another "yum clean all" and now it's 
picking up all those updates. So I wasn't crazy--yum was just fouled up 
again.

Suggestions welcome--let's see if I can actually do the updates this 
time. Two down, five left.

<Joe