Description of problem: Attempts to upgrade my Fedora 16 installation to Fedora 17 were failing: anaconda would bail during the upgrade process, complaining about being unable to find an .fc15 RPM (for "mythes") Initially I chalked the problem up to something going wrong with preupgrade, but then upgrading with the DVD also failed with the same error. Since the reference to an fc15 RPM seemed suspicious, I then ran "rpmdb --rebuilddb" before trying preupgrade again, and that time it worked. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-17.29-1.fc17.x86_64 (I think - that's the version I currently have installed, and it doesn't appear to have been updated since the F17 release) How reproducible: Completely consistent until I ran "rpmdb --rebuilddb" to fix what was presumably a stale reverse index entry, or some other problem that had been lingering in the RPM database for a while without causing any obvious harm Steps to Reproduce: 1. Have a latent issue in your RPM database 2. Try to use preupgrade or the DVD to upgrade F16 to F17 Actual results: Anaconda will throw an exception during the upgrade process (leaving an intact F16 system in place) Expected results: Anaconda can cope with a previously undiagnosed minor glitch in the RPM database (e.g. by always running the equivalent of "rpmdb --rebuildb" when upgrading an existing installation) Additional info: Kudos to anaconda for at least bailing out cleanly and not harming the existing F16 installation when the upgrade failed. The reason I'm filing this as an anaconda bug is because it *was* possible to eliminate the problem through an automated fix - all I had to do was run "rpmdb --rebuilddb" and the upgrade subsequently worked. It seems like it should be possible to build that into anaconda so it isn't relying on potentially stale cached data for upgrades.
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With F18, we've moved to a simpler upgrade process that does not involve anaconda in the least. We're using a tool called fedup now that takes the place of preupgrade, and then uses regular system tools to do the upgrade itself. With anaconda no longer involved, this bug report should no longer be relevant.