One of the most annoying problems with yum is that it blocks all access to the package database if one yum process is working, even if the second process only needs read access. Example: - Terminal A: yum update - Terminal B: yum search foo Actions like "search" and "info" should always work.
the install/update process is running as root if you run the search/info process as a user it is fine. if you run it as root the reason it can't work is b/c the cache is in the same location and could be being updated. So we lock that location.
Thanks for the explanation. I had "yum" aliased to "sudo yum", so everything was running under the same account. Worked around this now and it is already a nice improvement. However, if a "yum update" is in progress for example, why can't I search the package list with packagekit? Is there a technical reason or is this a packagekit bug?
During an update, especially if it is still depsolving, new metadata can be being downloaded. Querying the metadata when other things are writing to it is unlikely to gain results you want.