How to fix yum errors on CentOS, RHEL or Fedora
Last updated on October 4, 2020 by Dan Nanni
On Red Hat based systems such as RHEL, CentOS or Fedora, yum is used as a package management tool for installing, updating and removing RPM packages. When you try to install a package with yum command, you may encounter errors for various reasons. In this post, I will describe several common error symptoms for the yum command, and explain how to fix yum errors.
1. Fix 404 Errors
Symptom: When you try to install a package with yum, yum throws an error: "The requested URL returned error: 404
Not Found"
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror base | 3.7 kB 00:00 base/primary_db | 4.4 MB 00:09 extras | 3.5 kB 00:00 http://mirror.steadfast.net/centos/6.4/extras/x86_64/repodata/e0e507c76dc5e5aa66c1f32632b9dc0a9759d97031ab5a028562a7cb7be6e294-primary.sqlite.bz2: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 22 - "The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found" Trying other mirror. http://mirrors.seas.harvard.edu/centos/6.4/extras/x86_64/repodata/e0e507c76dc5e5aa66c1f32632b9dc0a9759d97031ab5a028562a7cb7be6e294-primary.sqlite.bz2: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 22 - "The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found" Trying other mirror.
You can get these 404 errors when the metadata downloaded by yum has become obsolete.
To repair 404 errors generated by yum, clean yum metadata as follows.
$ sudo yum clean metadata
Or you can clear the whole yum cache:
$ sudo yum clean all
2. Fix Connection Failure Errors
Symptom: You get "network is unreachable" or "couldn't connect to host" errors while running yum command.
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=6&arch=x86_64&repo=os error was 14: PYCURL ERROR 7 - "Failed to connect to 2a02:2498:1:3d:5054:ff:fed3:e91a: Network is unreachable" Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: base http://mirror.nexcess.net/CentOS/6.4/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 7 - "couldn't connect to host" Trying other mirror. http://mirrordenver.fdcservers.net/centos/6.4/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 7 - "couldn't connect to host" Trying other mirror. http://mirrors.cmich.edu/centos/6.4/os/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 7 - "couldn't connect to host" Trying other mirror.
The error means that you cannot properly connect to repository servers for some reason. If you can still ping the servers without any problem, check if your system is behind a proxy. If you are running yum behind a proxy, but have not specified the proxy in the yum configuration, you will get connection failure errors like the above.
To configure a proxy in the yum configuration:
$ sudo vi /etc/yum.conf
[main] proxy=http://proxy.com:8000
3. Fix Metadata Checksum Errors
Symptom: You get "Metadata file does not match checksum" while running yum command.
epel/pkgtags | 466 kB 00:14 http://mirror.steadfast.net/epel/6/x86_64/repodata/pkgtags.sqlite.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum Trying other mirror.
You can get the metadata checksum errors when the metadata downloaded by yum has become outdated.
To repair yum checksum errors, clean yum metadata:
$ sudo yum clean metadata
4. Fix Yum Lock Errors
Symptom: When you attempt to install a package with yum, you get an error saying that "Another app is currently holding the yum lock."
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 1880.
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
The other application is: PackageKit
Memory : 178 M RSS (586 MB VSZ)
Started: Tue Jul 9 09:43:17 2013 - 00:12 ago
State : Sleeping, pid: 1880
The culprit for this error is oftentimes PackageKit which is responsible for auto updates on Red Hat based systems. The PackageKit process gets automatically started upon boot, holding the yum lock.
To fix the error, turn off PackageKit on your system, so that it won't perform auto update checks. Here is an instruction for disabling PackageKit.
Once you reboot your desktop, you will no longer get yum lock errors.
5. Fix Repository Database Read Errors
Symptom: When you install a package with yum, you get the errors saying that "compressed file ended before the logical end-of-stream was detected"
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit Error: Error reading from file /var/cache/yum/x86_64/20/rpmfusion-free-updates/1461ed771601e7963990534c16584ab963d9c9f4eea94348ba357b93ab3c621f-primary.sqlite.bz2: compressed file ended before the logical end-of-stream was detected
This error can happen when yum command has been interrupted while it was downloading a repository database. So the saved database is incomplete, and considered corrupted.
To solve this problem, clean up yum database by running:
$ sudo yum clean metadata
6. Fix Repository Metadata Read Errors
Symptom: When you install or search for any package with yum, you get the following errors:
removing mirrorlist with no valid mirrors: /var/cache/yum/i386/6/updates/mirrorlist.txt Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: updates
This error can happen due to yum metadata issues. To fix this problem, clean up yum data including metadata and local cache.
$ sudo yum clean all
7. Fix Packages Database Error
Symptom: You are getting "cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm" error while running the yum command.
error: rpmdb: BDB0113 Thread/process 6983/140505029793600 failed: BDB1507 Thread died in Berkeley DB library error: db5 error(-30973) from dbenv->failchk: BDB0087 DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery error: cannot open Packages index using db5 - (-30973) error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm CRITICAL:yum.main:
This problem can happen when the local RPM database got corrupted or missing for some reason. Here is how to recreate the RPM database to fix this error.
$ sudo rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db* $ sudo db_verify /var/lib/rpm/Packages $ sudo rpm --rebuilddb $ sudo yum clean all
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