yum always installs the same packages again

[hechim]

Hi,

I am having a small problem with yum. The first time I use it during a day, it has to download the same packages before anything, whether I try "yum search" or "yum install". For the rest of the day everything's fine, until I turn off my laptop. Next time I turn it on, it is the same story all over again.

The packages it always downloads are:

rpmfusion-free
rpmfusion-free-updates
updates/metalink
updates
updates/primary_db

This is mostly annoying when I am at home, as my connection is rather slow and the last package can take quite some time.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks,
hechim

[aleph]

FYI, those are not packages, but repository metadata. Nothing to fix here, move along.

[hechim]

But I never had that problem before, neither with Fedora 8, nor with Fedora 12 before I formatted my laptop. Is this because I added some additional repositories some time ago? I can try to disable them if they are not essential.

EDIT: (for clarity)
After formatting I reinstalled Fedora 12.

[hephasteus]

Originally Posted by hechim

But I never had that problem before, neither with Fedora 8, nor with Fedora 12 before I formatted my laptop. Is this because I added some additional repositories some time ago? I can try to disable them if they are not essential.

Those are not packages. That is the data the computer needs to figure out what it has to update and what it doesn't. They aren't that large really even for a very slow link. It appears you are using fedora 13. Which is an alpha release and everytime they push an update to testing or stable or wherever that data has to get updated. So it's simply that you are in the middle of an update storm. It's not going to get any better for quite a while and in fact you'll have even more package changes as 13 moves towards beta freeze.

[hechim]

I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. I reinstalled Fedora 12 after I formatted my laptop a few weeks ago.

I understand what you are saying, hephasteus. However, should there not be an option not to always check for updates?

[PabloTwo]

Hello hechim-

There are two ways in which you "solve" your problem. The default expiration period that yum uses before it checks the repositories again is 1 1/2 hours. You can add a line to the /etc/yum.conf file to increase that time.

metadata_expires=1d

would set that to one day. Time can be set in seconds, minutes, hours or days. See 'man yum.conf'. A better way in my opinion is to use the "-C" option when using yum at the command line. That option tells yum to not bother to refresh the package metadata and/or filelists databases, but to use the information that is already existing in the yum cache.

The comment by hephasteus.. "They aren't that large really even for a very slow link.". Obviously, hephasteus has never experienced (or it's been so long he's forgotten) what life is like on a "very slow link" I have 2.8Kb/s dial-up. My usual connection speed is 26400b/s. A typical refresh of "primary/updates_db" metadata database is 21 minutes. If I do a yum "search" and the "filelist_db" has to be refreshed, that's at least an hour and a half wait.

Yeah, there has been a recent firestorm of F12 updates. I've been using the "-C" option a lot lately.

[hechim]

Thanks PabloTwo
I guess I will use -C at home and omit it at university, where the connection is much faster.

[hephasteus]

Uh ya. I used dialup till like 2005. And had super fast internet after that. I could download a DVD or distro in about 3.5 to 4.5 hours. Then I switched to 128k down and 32k up. But I used 4k/second dialup for years.
What I guess I AM missing is having tons of packages installed. I usually pare down the install by getting rid of everything I don't absolutely use.
One other thing you can do is enable the updates testing repo and download all the testing updates at the university then set your metadata expires to 3 days. As testing will get rid of everything that is likely to be pushed for several days. But just make sure you download any xorg or video stuff on it's own in case it breaks booting. I used to do that with 10. Update to testing to try to fix all the little broken things then turn it off and do it again the next week. Wednesday is usually when lots of packages are pushed from testing to stable to give them a couple days to fix it if it gets unpushed. I thought for sure my primary db was only a little over a megabyte. I'll check it when I get back to linux.

[PabloTwo]

Originally Posted by hephasteus

I thought for sure my primary db was only a little over a megabyte.

BASH:~/-> du -h /var/cache/yum/i386/12/updates/*primary.sqlite
16M	/var/cache/yum/i386/12/updates/fcf8da45f16fb55c9902a799a0b53430e14b38f4f1a9b334a53e5695492cdee8-primary.sqlite

When yum finishes downloading the updates/primary_db, it reports a size of 3.9MB. It's been awhile since I've allowed downloading of the updates filelists to complete, but the last time I did, yum reported it as something over 8MB's in size.

So, for fun, if both package metadata and filelists data were to download from fedora updates and the two rpmfusion updates repo, the math works out something like this:

fedoara updates - 3.9MB
fedora updates filelists -8.1MB
rpmfusion (just guessing a conservative amount for both) - 1MB

3.9+8.1+1=13MB download
@ ~7min per MB: 13x7=91min/60=1.5hrs

It's not about file size so much as about time. That's 1.5 hours (in reality, it's often closer to 2 hrs) you can't do anything else on the internet until that's finished. I just can't imagine wanting to enable the updates-testing repos so I can waste even more hours of my time waiting for all that data to download in addition to the usual, and needed, updates data. If I need something that's in updates-testing to fix a problem, I grab the package(s) from koji.