[BlueOnyx:00967] CentOS-5.3 known update issues

[Michael Stauber]

Hi all,

Ok, after a night of chasing bugs and dependencies I think I now have hammered 
out the typical issues that can happen when you "yum update" a BlueOnyx to 
CentOS-5.3.

At this time the repositories have updated RPMs in them which should make it 
possibly to almost seamlessly update in most cases.

Anyone that attempted a "yum update" between 21:00 GMT yesterday and 05:00 GMT 
today may have run into various stages of success and failure - depending on 
when he updated. I was fixing bugs on the fly and only one of them was a real 
showkiller that could have stopped your Apache dead in it's tracks. The rest 
just would just have stopped the upgrade from happening.

How to check if your server has updated fine:

# cat /etc/redhat-release

The output should read:

CentOS release 5.3 (Final)

If it doesn't, then check if /etc/redhat-release.rpmnew exists and see if that 
shows:

CentOS release 5.3 (Final)

Also check /var/log/yum.log for any errors.


How to manually update:
====================

Login by SSH as "admin", then "su -" to gain root access.

Run the following two commands:

yum clean all
yum update

It should report that there are 150-200 RPMs waiting to be installed and it 
should report no conflicts. If it reports no conflicts, then choose "y" to 
perform the installation

Keep an eye on the output and let it run through. If it reports any errors, 
come back and post the error you've gotten.


Known issues (already fixed):
========================

Apache / JSP / base-java-capstone / mod_jk:
-------------------------------------------------------------

There was a very diffuse problem with "mod_jk". It's an Apache module for 
Tomcat and needed for JSP pages.

The RPM base-java-capstone usually makes sure that "mod_jk" is installed by 
telling YUM that it requires "mod_jk" as a dependency. Hence YUM will install 
"mod_jk" as well.

For an unknown reason CentOS-5.3 uninstalled "mod_jk". When that happened, a 
restart of Apache would cause Apache to fail.

This has been fixed by an updated set of "base-java" RPMs, which are now 
available. 

If your Apache webserver is dead, then you may have pulled a preliminary 
version of "base-java" and need to run "yum clean" and "yum update" again.


YUM reports "bad id for repo":
-----------------------------------------

The YUM included in CentOS-5.3 no loger allows spaces in YUM repository names. 
Unfortunately we had a space in /etc/yum.repos.d/BlueOnyx.repo:

The testing repository was named:

[BlueOnyx Testing]

This caused the following error:

Bad id for repo: BlueOnyx Testing, byte =   8

This was fixed by an updated "blueonyx-yumconf" RPM by changing the name of 
the repository in /etc/yum.repos.d/BlueOnyx.repo to this:

[BlueOnyx-Testing]

(Sidenote for customers with Solarspeed software:)
............................................................................................

You may also see the following errors:

Bad id for repo: Virtual 5106R, byte =   7
Bad id for repo: Solarspeed.net AVSPAM v5, byte =   14

Those have also been fixed with updated RPMs, which are available on the YUM 
repository. Likewise a space (or multiple spaces) in the respective YUM 
repository names were responsible for this errors.


Perl module errors:
================

CentOS-5.3 contains an updated "perl" RPM. Typically the Perl from CentOS has 
a vast amount of Perl modules already built in, but sometimes not the really 
latest versions of those modules.

Some of you may have chosen to manually install Perl modules as RPMs from 
third party mirrors - or from other third parties through PKGs.

These may or may not cause conflicts now and could potentially stop the "yum 
upgrade" as the new "perl" RPM contains files that may already have been 
provided my third party Perl modules.

If that is the case, then you should seek the assistance from whoever 
installed those RPM's for you. 

Failing that you may attempt to force the install of the new "perl" RPM - 
although this *could* have undesireable side effects.

So IF your update fails because YUM reports conflicts related to Perl modules, 
then (and ONLY then!) use this command at your own risk:

rpm -hUv --force --nodeps \ 
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/perl-5.8.8-18.el5.i386.rpm

Then try a "yum update" again and see if it goes through.

..

Those are the findings so far. The "coast" should be clear so far by now and 
on a box free of third party software (or one with Solarspeed PKGs on it) the 
"yum update" should go through just fine.

And like mentioned before: If you run into update issues, please post here 
with the exact error message from yum.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber