Yum multilib version errors
Recently I came across an issue when trying to updating a number of RHEL servers. After issuing the yum update command it would come back with an error stating a multilib version issue and could not proceed due to numerous protected multilib versions.
The resolution
I first gathered some data that I could use, however in the end for this issue I only really needed the yum check command. The others are still nice to have to look over if needed though.
Run the following commands to gather your rpm and yum results and have them stored in the /tmp directory.
# rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH} = %{VENDOR} = %{installtime} (%{installtime:date}) \n" | sort &>/tmp/rpmall.txt
# rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}.%{ARCH}\n" | sort &>/tmp/rpmshort.txt
# yum check &> /tmp/yumcheck.txt
# rpm -Va &> /tmp/rpmva.txt
The first two command go quickly, the last one, particularly the yum check command will take some time to complete. So just be patient. It’s taken about 15 minutes at times on my servers to complete the command.
Once you have all your files you can issue the next two commands to check for duplicates in the yumcheck.txt file you created.
# grep "duplicate" /tmp/yumcheck.txt | awk '{ print $NF }' | egrep -v "\:" > /tmp/duplicaterpms-1.txt
# grep "duplicate" /tmp/yumcheck.txt | awk '{ print $NF }' | egrep ":" | awk -F':' '{ print $NF }' >> /tmp/duplicaterpms-1.txt
Next, you can run your final command which will clear out the duplicates and resolve your issue.
# rpm -e $(cat /tmp/duplicaterpms-1.txt) --justdb --nodeps
Finally, you can then issue the yum update command and you should have no further problems.
If you find that you only have one duplicate, or it shows in the yum check at the end of the failed yum update results you can run the rpm command with just a single library file. To do so, run the following command (using libgcc as our example):
# rpm -e --justdb --nodeps libgcc-4.8.5-11.el7.x86_64
If you are having similar issues, I hope this post will be of some assistance to you. It was a pain getting resolved to start with; however, following these steps servers that I come across with this issue are easily fixed.
On a side note, sometimes when running the rpm -e command you would get an error about a certain package, mine came back with “all” a few times. I resolved this by editing the duplicatesrpms-1.txt file and finding the package it is complaining about and just dd’ing the line.
Cheers,
Ivan Windon – RHCSA
