[lug] glibc and yum update woes

[D. Stimits]

Zan Lynx wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-08-27 at 17:51 -0600, D. Stimits wrote:
> 
>>I ran yum check-update and found it wants to update glibc-devel and 
>>glibc-headers on FC4. Unfortunately, trying to update results in 
>>dependency errors and it won't let me do it, nor can I figure out what I 
>>can remove without harming the system (looks like several glibc versions):
>>///////////////////////////////
> 
> [snip lots]
> 
> Looks like you somehow installed two versions of glibc.  You have to
> either remove one, the .90 version probably, or instead of using -U, use
> -i.

The thing is that I don't think I ever installed another glib version 
except with yum update. If I try to rpm -e glibc-2.3.90-8 it gives lots 
of errors:
error: Failed dependencies:
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) glib2-2.8.0-1.i386
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) cairo-0.6.0-2.i386
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) gtk2-2.7.5-1.i386
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) 
libwnck-2.11.91-1.i386
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) gnutls-1.2.6-1.i386
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) libsoup-2.2.5-1.i386
         libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by (installed) lirc-0.7.2-2.fc5.i386


The cairo dependency is a pain, because it isn't available on any of the 
fedora mirrors, I recall having added that to add gqview. Unfortunately, 
fedora extras says there is an update to gqview, but gqview can't be 
updated because no fedora repository has cairo, and I can't find the 
newer cairo as an rpm. I kind of wish there were a "repository_lint" 
that fedora packagers could use to detect which packages are requesting 
versions not available, and deny posting them.

> -U is upgrade, and upgrade tries to remove all other versions of the rpm
> after installing the new one.  -i will (usually) happily install
> duplicate versions of rpms.  It should only complain if the two rpms
> want to own the same filenames.

I really hate to keep adding more and more glibc versions...of all of 
the libraries, glibc is probably the one in most need of keeping simple. 
Has nobody else here run into failed dependencies from yum? I don't use 
rpm --force, but I'm getting close to the mood of using rpm -e --nodeps 
on all old glibc versions...no doubt that'd be fatal though.

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net