Sstrhsrtj

In a moment of confusion and impatience, I severely damaged my OS. Here's the deal...

System: CentOS 7

Problem: essential packages like SAMBA do not work, and yum will not do anything.

How it started: I installed kmod-xpad, which required a kernel update. This new kernel never worked, but I could boot from the old kernel on the boot loader. I did a routine package update via yum. Later on, I tried to remove kmod-xpad, but that failed. Now the system permanently tells me that I need to restart in order to install updates. Even worse, I cannot mount a network drive via Samba. I get an error message like...

/sbin/mount.cifs: /usr/lib64/samba/libreplace.so: version SAMBA_4.1.1' not found (required by /lib64/libwbclient.so.0)

/sbin/mount.cifs: /usr/lib64/samba/libwinbind-client.so: version `SAMBA_4.1.1' not found (required by /lib64/libwbclient.so.0)

While trying to fix SAMBA, I found that yum is completely confused, and had unfinished transactions. I searched around for solutions without luck (e.g. such as Why does "yum update" fails with many duplicates, after many months of no upgrades?)

Yum error messages:
When I run yum clean all and yum update I run into an error with dependency resolution, and am then told that there are 374 pre-existing rpmdb problems, which are basically a bunch of duplicate packages. Here is a snippet:

--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Error: Package: avahi-libs-0.6.31-13.el7.x86_64 (@anaconda)

           Requires: avahi = 0.6.31-13.el7

           Removing: avahi-0.6.31-13.el7.x86_64 (@anaconda)

               avahi = 0.6.31-13.el7

           Updated By: avahi-0.6.31-14.el7.x86_64 (base)

               avahi = 0.6.31-14.el7

Error: avahi-libs conflicts with avahi-0.6.31-14.el7.x86_64

Error: avahi-autoipd conflicts with avahi-0.6.31-14.el7.x86_64



...

You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem

 ** Found 374 pre-existing rpmdb problem(s), 'yum check' output follows:

 1:NetworkManager-1.0.0-14.git20150121.b4ea599c.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with 1:NetworkManager-0.9.9.1-29.git20140326.4dba720.el7_0.x86_64



...

avahi-libs-0.6.31-14.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with avahi-libs-0.6.31-13.el7.x86_64

avahi-ui-gtk3-0.6.31-14.el7.x86_64 has installed conflicts avahi < ('0', '0.6.31', '14.el7'): avahi-0.6.31-13.el7.x86_64

avahi-ui-gtk3-0.6.31-14.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with avahi-ui-gtk3-0.6.31-13.el7.x86_64

bash-4.2.46-12.el7.x86_64 is a duplicate with bash-4.2.45-5.el7_0.4.x86_64

...

yum log
And here are the main events from my yum.log:

Apr 24 11:34:08 Updated: linux-firmware-20140911-0.1.git365e80c.el7.noarch

Apr 24 11:34:13 Installed: kernel-3.10.0-229.1.2.el7.x86_64

Apr 24 11:34:14 Installed: kmod-xpad-0.0.6-3.el7.elrepo.x86_64

May 08 13:38:28 Updated: libgcc-4.8.3-9.el7.x86_64

May 08 13:38:28 Updated: centos-release-7-1.1503.el7.centos.2.8.x86_64

May 08 13:38:28 Updated: python-urlgrabber-3.10-6.el7.noarch

May 08 13:38:28 Updated: 1:control-center-filesystem-3.8.6-18.el7.x86_64

May 08 13:38:28 Updated: hyperv-daemons-license-0-0.25.20141008git.el7.noarch



... (a bunch of packages)...



May 08 13:40:31 Updated: xorg-x11-server-common-1.15.0-33.el7_1.x86_64

May 08 13:40:31 Updated: xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.15.0-33.el7_1.x86_64

May 08 14:02:03 Erased: kmod-xpad-0.0.6-3.el7.elrepo.x86_64

Is this a good solution?
Right now, I'm considering removing the duplicates by following the advice on the CentOS forum:

rpm -e --justdb <package-version>

This sounds tedious, and I'm not confident that it will really resolve my problem. Is this a situation that calls for reinstallation?

Any advice will be appreciated.

I have come to a partial solution: yum update --skip-broken was able to restore the basic functions like mount. However, yum still has the problems with dependency resolution and duplicates. I'm not sure why "--skip-broken" worked this time; I had tried it once before with a similar yum command, and it had not accomplished anything.