Claude Jones wrote: > Timothy Murphy wrote: >> My laptop seems to have contracted the yum disease: >> >> [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum ... >> Fourthly, it seems to me that yum has become subject >> to far more of these kinds of problem >> than it used to be. >> Yum is one of the central features of Fedora, >> and it is vital that it should work as reliably as possible. >> >> My strong impression is that the yum developers >> have become much too clever, >> and are adding far too many nice but not strictly necessary features. >> There is a lot to be said for leaving a program that works ok alone. >> "If it ain't broke don't improve it." > I think you're over-reacting. Repos keep an active list of files with > certain information about each file in the repo. As I understand it, > this is the metadata that's being referred to. When a new package is > uploaded to a repository, that list must be updated. All these actions > occur in time. On occasion, it is possible to get a list that's not been > fully updated after a new package has been uploaded. You've arrived at > the repository at an in-between time between when the new package has > been uploaded, and when the file list has been updated to reflect that > change. Occasionally, other issues occur akin to this, or simple > mistakes get made. In any event, usually, waiting a decent interval will > usually clear up the problem. When yum goes out to a repo to check for > updates, it's downloading that list of files - that's the metadata > package-list file. Yum doesn't download packages when it's checking for > updates, just that package list. Things get out of sync temporarily - > it's not a big deal. If you reflect for a moment on the update system, > it's truly a marvel. A new package gets created by someone; it gets > uploaded to the main Redhat repo; that sets in motion a chain of events > which results in that package being in turn uploaded to many, many, > servers across the planet, the mirrors. On machines across the planet, a > chain of events occurs which result in your being able to update your > machine - just keep in mind that it occurs over time. I agree that the yum system is very good. But if as you say the problem is a temporary one caused by updating (and it is my experience that the problem usually, but not always, cures itself in time) surely it should not be beyond the wit of man to have some method of disabling repositories while they are updating? Also my main gripe is that these yum errors are becoming much more common, in my experience. In this case I decided to solve the problem by updating this laptop to Fedora-8, which probably due to good luck seems to have taken far less time than resolving the metadata problem probably would have done. I'm currently updating 315 Fedora-8 packages, which seems to be going fine. In fact I just got the message "Replaced: kdebase.i386 6:3.5.8-5.fc8 kdegraphics.i386 7:3.5.8-5.fc8 kdenetwork.i386 7:3.5.8-4.fc8 kdepim.i386 6:3.5.8-4.svn20071013.ent.fc8 Complete!" I don't know why they singled out those packages to tell me about, but I'm sure they had their reasons. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
