stop stupidly telling people to do "yum clean all" when it's not necessary

[Kam Leo]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Steven Stern
<subscribed-lists at sterndata.com> wrote:
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> On 09/13/2009 03:11 PM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>> On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 01:16 +0930, Tim wrote:
>>> Jwalant Natvarlal Soneji:
>>>>> What could be the issue?
>>>>> It is on Fedora 10.
>>>
>>> Alan Evans:
>>>> I presume you can otherwise use the network -- DNS working, etc. So
>>>> did you try "yum clean all"? I think you can even do it from one of
>>>> the menus in yumex.
>>>
>>> Why do you suggest "yum clean all"?  Would you also suggest format and
>>> re-install?  Why do people keep offering STUPID yum clean all advice?
>>> Do people even know what it does?  Does anyone think before issuing
>>> advice anymore?
>>>
>>> It's rarely ever necessary.  It wipes out your entire cache of
>>> downloaded packages, forcing you to get them again if you're part way
>>> through downloading/updating, wasting your bandwidth, time, and the
>>> server.
>>>
>>> To clean the data about what's available to yum, simply use "yum clean
>>> metadata".
>>>
>>> People, stop issuing stupid advice.  Yes, it IS "stupid" advice, it's
>>> offering things without due thought.  That is what being stupid means.
>>>
>>>
>> I think it would be more pleasant to use the word "wrong" instead of
>> "stupid". Just for better relations between posters.
>
> As being one scourged for having offered that advice, let me say this:
> Hey, I didn't know about "clean metadata".  Now that I do, it's what I
> suggest.  I do have to admit that I was sorely tempted to top-post this
> response.
>
> - --
>
>  Steve

I say "Horse Feathers" to the OP of this thread. I grant that "yum
clean metadata" is more direct when the problem is corrupted metadata
and that at times this will save the re-downloading of cached
packages. However, using "yum clean all" is effective. [Especially if
the "skip-broken" utility is installed and upgrades are performed
using "yum upgrade --skip-broken" (minimizes number of orphaned
packages in the cache due to dependency problems).]  It corrects
common yum problems (i.e. corrupted headers, packages, dbcache, as
well as metadata). Plus it's easy to remember.

If the OP really wants to help list members why doesn't he contribute
to the writing of the Yum Users Guide/Manual. Yum has grown from a
single program to a hydra with 16 utilities and 26 plugins,
http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/YumUtilsGuides. (Please correct me if I
have miscounted or additional features have crept in.)  I am certain
an up to date guide covering this hydra would be greatly appreciated
by the community.