CentOS - Jun 2015 - C7: EPEL conflicts with Base and ElRepo?

On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 17:53:14 -0400
Fred Smith <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 10:04:04PM +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> > 
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > This just came to my attention --- I have CentOS 7 installed on one
> > machine, and have configured elrepo and epel as additional
> > repositories. When I turned on the yum-priorities package (and set
> > up priorities in the order base&updates < elrepo < epel), it
turns
> > out that there are 65 conflicting packages between base and epel,
> > and additional 5 between elrepo and epel (there are no conflicts
> > between base and elrepo, as expected).
> 
> Somehow I thought (without going to verify) that epel should be
> before elrepo.
> 
> Just looked at my repo configs and I have epel priority at 20 and
> elrepo at 40.
The priority between elrepo and epel is usually a matter of personal
preference, but either way epel is stepping over the base and updates
repos, regardless of elrepo, as I explained:
> > # yum repolist --disablerepo=elrepo
> > Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, priorities
[snip]
> > 65 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
This shouldn't happen, and as far as I know, it is considered a
Bad Thing(tm). Does anyone have any more detailed info regarding this?

Best, :-)
Marko

Le 19/06/2015 05:16, Marko Vojinovic a ?crit :
> On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 17:53:14 -0400
> Fred Smith <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 10:04:04PM +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> This just came to my attention --- I have CentOS 7 installed on one
>>> machine, and have configured elrepo and epel as additional
>>> repositories. When I turned on the yum-priorities package (and set
>>> up priorities in the order base&updates < elrepo < epel),
it turns
>>> out that there are 65 conflicting packages between base and epel,
>>> and additional 5 between elrepo and epel (there are no conflicts
>>> between base and elrepo, as expected).
>>
>> Somehow I thought (without going to verify) that epel should be
>> before elrepo.
>>
>> Just looked at my repo configs and I have epel priority at 20 and
>> elrepo at 40.
>
> The priority between elrepo and epel is usually a matter of personal
> preference, but either way epel is stepping over the base and updates
> repos, regardless of elrepo, as I explained:
>
>>> # yum repolist --disablerepo=elrepo
>>> Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, priorities
> [snip]
>>> 65 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
>
> This shouldn't happen, and as far as I know, it is considered a
> Bad Thing(tm). Does anyone have any more detailed info regarding this?
You are correct, but what "more info" do you want? You've spelled
it out
quite well, you have the solution (set the lowest prio == highest value 
for epel), end of story?
If you want it fixed you should report this to EPEL, not here. But with 
a large repo like EPEL this is bound to happen again and again as the 
distrib is a moving target. yum priorities mostly solves it.

On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 12:01 AM, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg
<Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg at imag.fr> wrote:
> Le 19/06/2015 05:16, Marko Vojinovic a ?crit :
>>>> 65 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
>>
>> This shouldn't happen, and as far as I know, it is considered a
>> Bad Thing(tm). Does anyone have any more detailed info regarding this?
>
>
> If you want it fixed you should report this to EPEL, not here. But with a
> large repo like EPEL this is bound to happen again and again as the distrib
> is a moving target. yum priorities mostly solves it.
One thing people should be aware is that EPEL is built for RHEL and
that the package list is not the same between RHEL and CentOS. For
example, CentOS adds cloud-related ones to the centos-extras repo
which may overlap EPEL's.

By the way, when I ran the same yum repolist command on my RHEL box
with epel enabled, there was no conflict.

Akemi

On Fri, 19 Jun 2015 09:01:43 +0200
Nicolas Thierry-Mieg <Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg at imag.fr>
wrote:
> You are correct, but what "more info" do you want?
Well, a list of names of those conflicting packages would be nice to
have. Or instructions how to ask yum to compile it.
> You've spelled it
> out quite well, you have the solution (set the lowest prio == highest
> value for epel), end of story?
Unfortunately, it isn't. I was running the machine for some time
without having the yum-priorities plugin. I (naively) believed that
EPEL is careful not to create conflicts against base (I have read on
this very list that it's safe to use). Stuff got installed, updated
several times over, etc.

Now after I figured there are in fact conflicts, I need to figure out
the consistency of the software installed on my machine. How many (and
which) packages from base have been stepped over by epel on my system?
How severe are the consequences?

I need to know how affected my system is, which packages to reinstall
(now that I've activated priorities), etc. It's a mess that needs to
be cleaned up.
> If you want it fixed you should report this to EPEL, not here. But
> with a large repo like EPEL this is bound to happen again and again
> as the distrib is a moving target. yum priorities mostly solves it.
No, I don't really care to have it fixed, yum-priorities can take care
of that in the future. But I want to fix my server, to make sure that
all packages from base are still there.

And I also want to make some noise about it on this list, so that other
people don't end up with the same problem. It should be stated clearly
that epel is *not* safe to use without the priorities plugin.

Best, :-)
Marko