Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 1417
free list corrupt error with rpm -Uvh
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:49 EDT
I downloaded all the latest RPMs for GNOME 1.0, and did an rpm -Uvh on the whole thing at once. After gnumeric, I got the following: free list corrupt (14736712)- contact support@redhat.com I tried upgrading the other packages, but then I got the exact same message on gtk+-devel. I tried removing all the GNOME-related RPMs, then installing them again, but now I get the error on enlightenment (which hadn't given the error before). So, at this point, I think I'm pretty screwed, because my feeling is that one or more of the RPM files in /var/lib have somehow gotten corrupted. This means that I have to reinstall my whole system, if I ever want to use RPM again... I'm pretty sure I have a backup of /var/lib/rpm that I can try working from, which might save me that, but it might not work, especially if the corruption happened before I tried to do the GNOME thing (or if the corruption is going to be triggered by the GNOME packages).
I get this too, RH5.2, rpm -Uvh kills me. Trying to install Gnome-1.0. I have successfully installed it at home, and have been able to successfully install other packages previously.
Glad to see other people are having the problem too. Same thing happens for me trying to install Gnome 1.0: rpm -Uvh *.rpm generates: free list corrupt (3746440)- contact support@redhat.com. Previous versions of Gnome gave me no problems.
*** Bug 1425 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** I was installing the new GNOME 1.0.1 using the command RPM -Uvh * when the entire process hung on me. I used the command 'kill -9 pid' to kill the process. Now when I try to pick up from where i left off it gives me the error message free list corrupt (6964424)- contact support@redhat.com so I did, but the mailer sent it back to me. Patrick Stockton
*** Bug 1433 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** While installing GNOME 1.0 from RPMs I got this error. free list corrupt (4044808)- contact support@redhat.com I can add some RPMs, but others return the same error. Unfortunately now I have a half-installation between .99.2 and 1.0 and my panel won't work anymore. Thanks, Matt Ray
Okay, I got tired of waiting for the "solution", so I poked around the rpm code. Then I noticed a "rebuilddb" option. Hmmm.. why did I never see that when I looked in the man page? Oh, there it is, with a one line description. So I tried it out and it worked for me. rpm --rebuilddb got rid of the "corruption". One of the db blocks was listed in the free list but wasn't free or something. This doesn't explain why it got corrupted in the first place, but at least I'm running again. Maybe this will help someone else who, like me, doesn't know very much about rpm.
Sorry, I dunno what the original problem is/was so there is no solution yet because we can't reproduce the problem here. But the work around is indeed rpm --rebuilddb
In short, "me too". I got the same error, got it installing the GNOME 1.01 RPMs, and fixed it (apparantly) with "rpm --rebuilddb".
I believe this problem is caused by attempting to install two versions of the same package simultaneously, as in rpm -U foo*.i386.rpm foo*.i386.rpm For now (and probably the near future): Don't do that! And if you do happen to install 2 versions of the same package simultaneously, you will need to do "rpm --rebuilddb"
The usual trigger for this problem is when two nearly identical copies of an rpm are being installed on the same command line. For now, the work around is "Don't do that." And if you did do that, remember to do rpm --rebuilddb
rpm-4.0 uses Berkeley db-3.1.14 to avoid "free list corrupt' problems with the rpm-3.0.x (and earlier) implementation.