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

Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan at gmail.com
Tue Sep 15 22:43:34 UTC 2009


On Tue, 2009-09-15 at 14:34 -0700, Alan Evans wrote:
> I have myself found that "yum clean all" apparently fixes many
> problems even when I'm not sure why it should. When I have a problem
> updating, I usually start with cleaning the cache and metadata just to
> establish a baseline. Ninety percent of the time, this first step
> makes my problem go away. But apparently that approach means I'm
> stupid.

Have you tried "yum clean metadata" in any of these cases, rather than
"yum clean all"? If not, how do you know that the former would not have
worked?

My personal experience is that cleaning metadata has *always* fixed
problems without the need for cleaning the cache. That may not be
everyone's experience, but it is mine. Even if it doesn't always work,
it is always faster, and doesn't stop you cleaning the cache later if
you need to. IOW the sensible procedure is:

yum clean metadata
iff that doesn't solve the problem: yum clean all

poc




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