Get tons of garbage output when I do yum update

[Red Squirrel]

This is on CentOS 5, yeah yeah I know it's old, but I can't be reinstalling my servers every time a new release comes out. I do have plans to change it eventually when I switch to another server. This is for an online dedicated server so it's not that simple, need to basically rent a secondary server so I can move stuff over.

Anyway, while trying to do an update, I just get tons of this crap that continuously spams the console. Is there a way to make that stop and make it actually update the system properly?






I've been on the lookout at OVH as they have some dedicated servers for $50/mo so once they're in stock I'll probably switch, and that will give me a newer OS in the process then I can migrate my stuff, but not sure when that will happen.

 

[alkemyst]

Your base OS is hosed in some way or your upgrade is non-compatible.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Was afraid of that, this is a remote server so not like I can just spin up a new VM locally and migrate stuff over. I have been thinking of moving to a new server anyway which would mean a fresh OS that I can migrate stuff to... so I may have to expedite that move. I'll get a new fresh OS at the same time.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Check your logs and see what they are griping about. /var/log/messages and /var/log/yum.log

Your OS base is version 5.X.....when you patch using yum update it's only patching applications/kernels. You will still stay on that same base version and pull from the repos configured in yum.

If you're not getting what you expect, you could be dealing with a corruption issue with yum or pointing at a bad repository. If you know the applications and custom configs you run on the server, go ahead and tar them up, copy them off the server...taking a good backup is always a good idea when you suspect corruption and don't have a root cause.

After that, run a
# yum clean all
and see if that fixes the issue. You can always uninstall yum with rpm and download/reinstall...
http://yum.baseurl.org/

Download and install with rpm, then point it to the correct Cent Repos and start over.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Logs don't show anything, it's updating the files. I tried yum clean all. I'll see what happens next time there's new updates. It seems that it's installing the updates anyway, it's just spewing off tons of garbage. It's almost like some kind of memory corruption, the second screenshot is strings that are used to start up a UT3 server, which is in a script in the home directory of the u3 server account. UT3 is not a yum package so not sure why it would interact with it in any way.

Right now yum update shows no updates, so it seems that despite all that stuff it still updates. This is strange. I'll have to wait and try later and see if it does it again when there's new updates. Or maybe yum clean all did the trick too...

I have nightly backups that run so already have backups if it is disk corruption or something. Though, I should maybe copy some of those backups aside... one thing I don't have setup properly yet is retention. I have to read up on rdiff backup.

 

[ultimatebob]

That is weird! Are you sure that you have the terminal settings configured properly for that SSH session?

 

[Red Squirrel]

What kind of settings would those be? I just type ssh user@host to get to it.

 

[ultimatebob]

What kind of settings would those be? I just type ssh user@host to get to it.

I was wondering if the character encoding on the server is configured to something other than UTF-8 and that is causing the issue. You can fix that by checking/changing the locale on the server.

I know, it's a long shot.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Where would I check that? I could check and compare with other servers and see.

 

[ultimatebob]

I believe that you can check that with the system-config-language command, or the /etc/sysconfig/i18n file.