[Leaplist] [1/2] CentOS install -- Sysreport v. SOS

[Bryan J. Smith]

[ Breaking this up into two (2), separate responses ]

Hank Lambert wrote: 
> The install finished, and I rebooted into the server.
> Right away, I got a notice that there was 146 updates
> available. I selected apply updates and it (Yum?)
> starts resolving dependencies. After about 1 minute,
> I get an error that states "Error performing updates".
> I click on details, and got the following error:
> [('file /usr/sbin/sysreport conflicts between attempted
> installs of sysreport-1.4.3-13.el5 and sos-1.7-9.1.el5',
> (6, '/usr/sbin/sysreport', 0L)), ('file
> /usr/share/sysreport/functions conflicts between
> attempted installs of sysreport-1.4.3-13.el5 and
> sos-1.7-9.1.el5', (6, '/usr/share/sysreport/functions',
> 0L))]

First off, "sos" replaces and deprecates "sysreport" as of RHEL 4.6
and 5.1.  SOS includes symlinks and compatibility modes for legacy
sysreport operation.

Secondly, if you use "yum upgrade" this will work.  If you use "yum
update," this will fail.  The "yum update" is the default mode of
most GUI update tools, it's a "safe" way to update a system.  The
"yum upgrade" allows deprecated packages to be automagically
uninstalled, which is not as safe, but should take care of your
issue.

I.e., the reason why you're getting the error is because it's trying
to keep sysreport while it installs sos.

So, third, I recommend you run from the command line, as root, "yum
upgrade".  It should resolve uninstalling deprecated packages, such
as "sysreport".  If not, you can always, manually remove it with:  
  # yum remove sysreport

Then re-attempt your update.

NOTE:  update v. upgrade is completely different for apt-get.  It's a
common mistake most Debian users make when new to yum-based systems,
such as Yellow Dog (the originator of the tool), Fedora, RHEL
(CentOS), etc...

> So I Google the error message knowing there is absolutely no
> way I will get any results, and there was actually 3. The
> first one took me to a forum that provided a link to the Red
> Hat knowledgebase that said to uninstall syslog with "RPM -e
> syslog". So I did just that, and now I've updated my system.

First off, try to always use "yum remove" instead of "rpm -e".

Secondly, uninstall _sysreport_ and not syslog.  Either you read it
incorrectly, or someone in the forum didn't know what they were
doing.  "syslog" is completely different than "sysreport"/"sos".  The
latter is a Red Hat debug/report tool, the former is a _core_
Linux/UNIX logging facility.  ;)

I.e., again, you should have run:  
  # yum remove sysreport

> My question is what is syslog I removed and did I need it?

It's the primary logging mechanism in Linux/UNIX systems.  There are
alternatives such as syslog-ng and the like.

Again, either you misread the forum or someone stupidly typed
"syslog" instead of "sysreport."  That was a major typo.  ;)

> It seems to work now without it, but that doesn't mean I won't
> pay down the line. I am very new to CentOS, actually have about
> 10 minutes on a CentOS system.

Er, um, you need to do the following:  
  # yum remove sysreport
  # yum install syslog
  # yum update
If the last command fails dependencies, then try:  
  # yum upgrade


-- 
Bryan J. Smith       Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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