RH7 UpdateAgent - lost in my Brave New World

[brasso]

Yesterday I finally discovered the Help file for RedHat Update Agent, buried in the YourNetwork of the RedHat website. I’d strictly been going by-guess-&-by-gosh before then. I printed out copious instructions and sat down last night to play with it. I would download a “screen” of updates (how many fit in the update window without scrolling down), let UpdateAgent download and install them, then run up2date –p to synchronize my account on the Redhat site with what existed on my machine.

Did I know what I was doing, which updates I needed? Are you kidding? Hell no, I’m just playing at being a Unix sysadmin (hey, look at me! I too can be a geek and make 60 grand a year with this arcane ****).

All went well for 2 “screens” full of updates. The 3rd screenful, I think, consisted of the following stuff (yeah, I was just smart enough to TRY and keep track of which updates I was messin with):

Gnorpm,
gnupg,
iputils,
krb5-devel,
krb5-libs,
libstdc++,
libstdc++-devel,
modutils,
rpm-4.0.2-7x,
rpm-build,
rpm-dev.

I took ‘screenshots’ as I went along to document this, but I’m not sure the resulting .jpgs numbered themselves in alpha order as I thought they were doing.

After the last screen, when I did my up2date –p, it gave me a ration of s**t and refused to work. Nothing in UpdateAgent works any longer, the registration entity, configuration entity or the Agent itself.

I suspect the boo-boo has something to do with those 3 rpm updates, but I really don’t know. If anyone has any desire or expertise to help I could go back (I’m in Win98) and get the blurb that up2date –p brings up. But I suspect I’m ready for another re-install of RH7. Problem is, of course, that if I don’t know what I did wrong I’m fated to repeat my mistake again. Any answers?
Earl

[Kid98]

Are you attempting to run this stuff from the command-line? If so,then you may try to do an update from the desktop instead. If you cannot run up2date from the desktop then browse to ftp.redhat.com and find the updates section for RH 7.0. Download the up2date, register, and gnome (if that is your desktop) components for updating. Install these if rpm will let ya. If you get register running again, I would recommend you re-register and then see if up2date behaves. You may want to just check the mailing list at list-man.redhat.com to see if this problem is being fixed. Maybe a lot of peeps have broken updaters due to some change RH has made.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Kid

PS: I know the updates site for us beta users was recently reorganized, maybe this affected RH7.0 users too.

[eXtremist]

I used up2date to update the krb5-devel and krb5-libs packages and lost printing functionality. :(

Now, when linux boots is says starting lpd
error: undefined symbol: stat [FAILED]

So updating isn't always the best thing to do. I think from now on I'm taking the approach "if it ain't broke..."

I have reinstalled redhat about 20 times.. Each time because I broke something and learned by my mistake. Now I'm sick of reinstalling and I'm HOPING there will be another package update to fix this problem.

Up2date should have an option to revert back to the old packages if anything goes wrong. That would make life SOOOOO much easier. It is a lot harder to downgrade to an earlier package than it is to upgrade!

[brasso]

Kid,
I'm using the Gnome GUI UpdateAgent. I just used the cli to do the up2date -p after each batch of updates, to coordinate RedHat's idea of what updates I have with what I actually do have. No longer possible to re-register the thing, though that seemed to be a daily necessity for the last 2 or 3 days.

Maybe I SHOULD learn to use the cli to do updates first, before using their tool, but it just seems SO hard!

Hmm... perhaps it IS that krb5 stuff I did, rather than the rpm update stuff. I read on one newsgroup a recommendation to reload the krb stuff from the CD, replacing the downloaded update. Possible? How? If possible, do you think I should attempt. Probably gonna reinstall anyway, couldn't hurt, huh?
Earl

[bdg1983]

There's some explaination for Update Agent not working anymore. Saw a post here a few days ago asking the same. Someone gave the reason why and how to fix it.

I'm not a Redhat user, so didn't make it a point to remember everything. A search should be able to find it.

[brasso]

There's some explanation for Update Agent not working anymore. Saw a post here a few days ago
asking the same. Someone gave the reason why and how to fix it.

I'm not a Redhat user, so didn't make it a point to remember everything. A search should be able to
find it.

Thanks. I did find that posting you referred to here: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=4&t=010855

I ftp'd to the RedHat site as the poster suggested, the site has been 'rearranged', apparently to even better discourage anyone from finding anything. I eventually found some likely looking rpm and up2date updates, downloaded them and ran them from cli with -Fvh as he suggested. No luck. Have no idea if I did what he suggested correctly or not. Looks like I ready for another exciting re-install of RH7.
Earl

[bdg1983]

Only so much I can suggest since I'm not a RedHat user. Going to give most of the distros a try one of these days.

Keep plugging away at it...

[Kid98]

I see you have not posted back, did you give up or did it start working. I think the update servers were having some troubles during the time you had your problems. It should be fixed by now. Please let me know if you are still having trouble, I can call someone I know at Redhat and ask about this. I would rather not bother him if it is fixed. You might also try calling the support number. If you registered with RHN I believe you have 30 days of phone support included. (not sure though) Currently my updater for the RH beta is broken, but in beta this is a weekly occurence. hehe Post back and let us know if this was resolved.

Regards,
Kid

[brasso]

Thanks for the reply. No, I gave up and reinstalled. Steering around the rpm rpm for now. Except for the other guy who managed to fix it by going back to an earlier rpm I would not have been sure whether I had screwed something else up prior to downloading that update.

I'm going to try using the option in UpdateAgent to not delete the rpm files after they're installed. Maybe I'll warehouse them on a zip for inevitable reinstall I'll do in the not-so-far future. Hell no, I never got zip working in RH7, will copy over to Windows and zip them from there.
Earl