[ale] My yum broke again and I can't fix it this time

[Jim Kinney]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:03 AM, Michael B. Trausch <mbt at naunetcorp.com>wrote:

> On 03/20/2013 10:48 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
>
>> Did you replace the default gnome environment? It still looks like
>> someone screwed the dependencies of the group. Those packages require a
>> desktop environment. Unless the mate overwrote all the crap in the rpmdb
>> (smack the package maintainer for a screwup of colossal proportions) it
>> should just uninstall with the groupremove as you tried.
>>
>
> I didn't remove any of GNOME's packages or anything, just installed the
> new stuff.
>
>
>  try just removing the desktop manager application of mate using yum
>> remove foo instead of groupremove. You can add a few
>> --exclude=<package-to-keep> exceptions to prevent total calamity.
>>
>
> I did find some more interesting things while I was poking through the
> documentation to fix my system.  Just after I'd sent the previous email, I
> found "group info", which I used to list the components of the "MATE
> Desktop" group.  I found another group called (heh!) "mate-desktop".
>

OK. THAT'S not right! Should only be a single group.  Do you have multiple
repos? Base Fedora, updates and rpmfusion free/non-free are enough for a
solid environment.

yum clean all (to clear out the cruft and force a refresh of yum metadata)
then yum grouplist should show only one mate collection.

>
> So, I tried a "yum group remove mate-desktop", which appeared to be much
> more restrictive though it still sucked out a lot of packages.  But, it
> didn't try to remove glibc or anything like that, thankfully.
>
> I looked over the list and told yum to go ahead.
>
> About a minute later, my X session crashed.  Oops.  That's right, modern
> software doesn't like it when things on the disk change drastically.
>
> Well, that killed yum, too.  Double-oops.
>
> So I thought "okay, I'll re-run the command", which helpfully told me to
> "yum-complete-transaction" instead.  So I did that.
>
> Alright.  At this point, MATE, GNOME, X, and several other things have
> been removed.  Yuck.  So, I tried "yum group install 'GNOME Desktop'",
> which took a few seconds, displayed the to-be-installed list of packages as
> usual, and then the prompt.  I told it to go ahead and install, and then it
> bombed with a transaction check failure (I didn't take a picture of it, but
> it involved 4 packages that "are already installed", including kbd).
>

This REALLY sounds like the MATE packager screwed the pooch. Poke this up
on the fedoraforum and their bugzilla.

>
> So I removed those four packages and tried again, and it worked.
>
> Then I had to re-install the Cinnamon Desktop group, because that also got
> removed.
>
> After having done all that, when I attempt to remove "Cinnamon Desktop",
> the package manager _still_ goes nutso and tries to remove the whole world.
>
> I don't think that functionality works as it is supposed to...


The joy of third-tier desktop stuff. LXDE took a few releases to get solid.
Fedora is really joined at the hip to Gnome. KDE works but it's an
afterthought process.

>
>
>  OR - try a yum groupinstall GNOME (or whatever it's called) then
>> groupremove mate. Basically try and rewrite the deps tree so mate is
>> disconnected.
>>
>
> Let me know if I'm wrong, but didn't I effectively do that when I
> reinstalled GNOME and Cinnamon in my effort to get a working display?  :-)
>
> And if so, how did such a problem make its way into the Fedora core
> repositories?
>
> I really do like this distribution, though, package manager and its
> front-ends aside...
>
>
>         --- Mike
>
> --
> Michael B. Trausch, President
> Naunet Corporation
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
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- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
*
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