Bug 72543

I managed to recover from this. "rpm --rebuilddb" had the same problem, but I
realized that this is just a Berkeley DB database. A "db_recover -e" in
/var/lib/rpm worked wonders. That install was forgotten about (the transaction
rolled back, I guess). The next time I ran it I got errors like this:

    rpmdb: illegal flag specified to DB->cursor
    error: db4 error(22) from db->cursor: Invalid argument

but it seemed to work. and after that, everything worked fine.

If you insist on doing "kill -9", then you *will*
have stale locks that need to be removed by doing
	rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*

I did the 'kill -9' _after_ it hung the first time. Didn't see a whole lot of
other choices...

I couldn't understand why this bug is closed with 'not a bug'. 
When ever i try to install an rpm , %40 of the time rpm command stalls like 
explained above. First i ignored it and reboot to make it work again (yeah it 
does) but now it makes me really disappointed. So i traced for the solution. 
This is what i figured out: 
/var/lib/rpm/Packages which is in Berkley db format stays open so no other new 
rpm commands cannot be executed properly (they hang like the first hanged one) 
I figured out this by `lsof /var/lib/rpm/Packages` 
When you kill (with sig -9 )the first hanged rpm command and rebuild rpm db 
everything goes smoothly again. 
As a conclusion it must be a bug.

It's NOTABUG because:
	1) there's no way to trap "kill -9" in order
	to do the necessary cleanup. Use SIGHUP, SIGINT,
	SIGTERM, or SIGQUIT instead of -9.
	2) there's no way to tell which locks are real
	and which are stale on the next execution of rpm.
	Preventing stale locks by trapping the signals above
	is the better solution.
So don't use "kill -9", use "kill" instead.
	

I noticed a similar problem when I deinstalled an old rpm package from my
'null' system to make place for a newer one from Rawhide :

[root@localhost tmp]# rpm -e redhat-config-keyboard-0.9.9-6
error: Failed dependencies:
        redhat-config-keyboard is needed by (installed) firstboot-0.9.9-13
[root@localhost tmp]# rpm -e redhat-config-keyboard-0.9.9-6 --nodeps

     <<<< here RPM just hangs, no progress, nothing >>>>
    (waited for about 5 minutes, should've taken 5 seconds)

(note: there is no redhat-config-keyboard process active).

<CTRL-C> does not help to abort the RPM process. I really have to kill -9 that
process. Note that I tried other kill signals.

[root@localhost TESTING]# ps -ef |grep redh
root      3953  2303  0 20:53 pts/7    00:00:00 rpm -e redhat-config-keyboard-0.
root      4061  4022  0 21:17 pts/3    00:00:00 grep redh
[root@localhost TESTING]# kill -3 3953
[root@localhost TESTING]# kill -2 3953
[root@localhost TESTING]# kill -1 3953
[root@localhost TESTING]# ps -ef |grep redh
root      3953  2303  0 20:53 pts/7    00:00:00 rpm -e redhat-config-keyboard-0.
root      4063  4022  0 21:17 pts/3    00:00:00 grep redh
[root@localhost TESTING]# kill -9 3953
[root@localhost TESTING]# ps -ef |grep redh
root      4065  4022  0 21:17 pts/3    00:00:00 grep redh
[root@localhost TESTING]# 

It locked for me again. Unresponsive to anything but kill -9.

$ sudo rpm -Uvh up2date-*
warning: up2date-2.9.55-1.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 897da07a
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:up2date                warning: /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date created as
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date.rpmnew
########################################### [ 50%]

0x08181a41 in __libc_nanosleep ()
(gdb) bt
#0  0x08181a41 in __libc_nanosleep ()
#1  0x0814bf4b in nanosleep ()
#2  0x0818196f in sleep ()
#3  0x0805fd80 in psmWait ()
#4  0x08060241 in runScript ()
#5  0x08060838 in runInstScript ()
#6  0x08062a53 in rpmpsmStage ()
#7  0x080623db in rpmpsmStage ()
#8  0x080628a5 in rpmpsmStage ()
#9  0x0807cce0 in rpmtsRun ()
#10 0x0806da15 in rpmInstall ()
#11 0x08048e4d in main ()
#12 0x0815aa12 in __libc_start_main ()

rpm-4.1-0.87.

It left locks lying around, I deleted them.

Would it be helpful if I compiled the srpm with debugging flags and gave a
backtrace with line numbers and such?

I'm reopening because

> It's NOTABUG because:
>     1) there's no way to trap "kill -9" in order
>     to do the necessary cleanup. Use SIGHUP, SIGINT,
>     SIGTERM, or SIGQUIT instead of -9.

SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGTERM, and SIGQUIT do not work.

Please reopen a different bug, not this
bug.

This bug was reopened because RPM sometimes hangs while installing
- or deinstalling - a package.

(I've encountered this bug a couple of times now, when I was deinstalling
packages for replacing these with newer ones from Rawhide).

The phenomenon that RPM can only be killed by a 'kill -9' is the result of
this bug.

The first sentence of this Bugzilla entry is:
"rpm hangs during package installation."

and this Bugzilla entry has the subject:
"RPM hangs while installing a package".

So this bug can be reopened. :-)

I'll open a new separate bug because of the 'kill signal situation' when
this bug happens.

this is indeed a bug there is no way around it ... i have found way
too many experienced users that this is happening to .. you should not
have to rebuild the rpm db so many times if ever .. i have rebuilt
mine about 20 times to fix this problem without a reboot ..

"fix"
lsof /var/lib/rpm/Packages
kill -9 <pid>
rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
rpm -vv --rebuilddb

-warren

thanks warren. your solution rocks.

i got myself in trouble as Peter did, by trying to de-install cdrao. rpm hanged
for entire night before i killed (kill -9) it next morning. nothing worked
afterwards.

i saw this solution by you, executed last 2 command. everything now is fine.

thanks again.

This happened to me in RHEL 7.6! Thanks to warren for that solution!

How was this closed as NOTABUG in 2002 when it's STILL a bug? I am lookin at you, Jeff Johnson.

Peter is right on the money:

This bug was reopened because RPM sometimes hangs while installing
- or deinstalling - a package.

(I've encountered this bug a couple of times now, when I was deinstalling
packages for replacing these with newer ones from Rawhide).

The phenomenon that RPM can only be killed by a 'kill -9' is the result of
this bug.

The first sentence of this Bugzilla entry is:
"rpm hangs during package installation."

and this Bugzilla entry has the subject:
"RPM hangs while installing a package".

So this bug can be reopened. :-)