Bug 329621

Created attachment 225671 [details]
traceback from pup when it failed.

Can you try with the version of pup in f7-updates-testing and see if things work
better for you with it?

Sorry. Where do I find f7-updates-testing? 

Run (as root)
  yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update pirut

new pup: (from menu->system->software updater, as root): Hangs
indefinitely showing "Retrieving software information" window. But
since I ran the old pup once this morning with network on, and it
updated the cache, I am not sure that the environments are exactly
parallel. The original bug showed up first thing in the morning, with no
previous  yum (or network) activity. This behaviour is definitely better than
the old, though perhaps still less than ideal.

I will try it again tomorrow morning before any other network activity to see if
it behaves differently when the cache has aged.

Confirming (and correcting) yesterday's report. When new pup was run on a system
that was booted without proper network connection, it did hang with the
"Retrieving software information" window on screen, but not indefinitely. I went
downstairs for brunch, and when I came back, it had timed out and showed a very
good message about not connecting to server and check network connection. I was
just not patient enough yesterday to wait for the proper diagnostic to show up.
Problem solved.

An updated pirut packages is available in the Fedora 7 Updates Testing
repository which should help to resolve this problem.  Can you install this
package by running
   yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update pirut
and then see if you still can reproduce this problem?

Sorry if I was imprecise in my wording. My reference to "new pup" in comment 5
and 6 was intended to imply the version obtained as per your instructions in
comment 4. So the changes noted in my comment 5 and 6 reflect the improvement I
got when I ran the updated version of pirut. No crash, no complaint about an
uncaught exception, just a hang for an extended time, and eventually an
appropriate error message. So the updated version seems to solve the problem.

While I find the time to get the error message ridiculously long in principle (I
gave up this morning and killed it after about 45 minutes), in practice, even a
less sophisticated owner than I will have no trouble figuring out the problem
without needing an error message. 

I did run the yum command after seeing your comment 7, in case you had made
further changes, but it seems not:
[root@localhost /]# yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update pirut
fedora                    100% |=========================| 2.1 kB    00:00
updates-testing           100% |=========================| 2.3 kB    00:00
updates                   100% |=========================| 2.3 kB    00:01
primary.sqlite.bz2        100% |=========================| 2.2 MB    00:09
Setting up Update Process
Could not find update match for pirut
No Packages marked for Update

Closing due to inactivity.  If you have further information to add to this
report, please either reopen the bug or file a new one.