MoonPoint Support Weblog

Another app is currently holding the yum lock

After resolving a problem with network connectivity on a CentOS 7 Linux server, I attempted to install a package using yum, but received the message "Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit..."

# yum install rdesktop
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 16020.
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: PackageKit
    Memory :  46 M RSS (1.4 GB VSZ)
    Started: Fri Jul 29 12:08:28 2016 - 01:14 ago
    State  : Running, pid: 16020
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: PackageKit
    Memory :  46 M RSS (1.4 GB VSZ)
    Started: Fri Jul 29 12:08:28 2016 - 01:16 ago
    State  : Sleeping, pid: 16020
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: PackageKit
    Memory :  46 M RSS (1.4 GB VSZ)
    Started: Fri Jul 29 12:08:28 2016 - 01:18 ago
    State  : Sleeping, pid: 16020
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: PackageKit
    Memory :  46 M RSS (1.4 GB VSZ)
    Started: Fri Jul 29 12:08:28 2016 - 01:20 ago
    State  : Sleeping, pid: 16020
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: PackageKit
    Memory :  46 M RSS (1.4 GB VSZ)
    Started: Fri Jul 29 12:08:28 2016 - 01:22 ago
    State  : Sleeping, pid: 16020
Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to exit...
  The other application is: PackageKit
    Memory :  46 M RSS (1.4 GB VSZ)
    Started: Fri Jul 29 12:08:28 2016 - 01:24 ago
    State  : Sleeping, pid: 16020
^C

Exiting on user cancel.
#

I checked the process and saw the following information:

# ps aux | grep yum
root     16020 28.4  2.3 1455028 79512 ?       SN   12:08   1:16 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/yum/yumBackend.py refresh-cache yes
root     16354  0.0  0.0 112652   952 pts/0    S+   12:12   0:00 grep --color=auto yum
#

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/utilities/package] permanent link

Building RPMs

The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM ) is a tool that automates the installation and uninstallation of software on a Linux system and allows you to more easily manage installed software. The rpm command works with software packaged into rpm files. You can use the rpm command with rpm files to determine what other software is required prior to installing the new software, i.e. you can see the "dependencies" of the new software. You can use the rpm command to easily obtain details on all software installed on a system that was installed via an rpm package. For instance rpm -a will show a list of all installed packages. If I was interested in only packages related to Clamav, a free antivirus scanner, I could filter the output with grep, e.g. rpm -a | grep clamav. I might then see the following on a system:

$rpm -qa | grep clamav
clamav-db-0.80-2.0.rh9.rf clamav-0.80-2.0.rh9.rf clamav-milter-0.80-2.0.rh9.rf

I could get details for one of those packages, clamav, with rpm -qi clamav.

If you wish to build your own RPM files, you can find information on how to do so at Dag Wieer's Red Hat Package Manager v4 webpage and at IBM's Packaging software with RPM webpage.

The RPM format is not restricted to just the Red Hat distributions of Linux, but is used on other Linux distributions as well, such as SuSE's and Caldera's distributions.

References:

Red Hat Package Manager v4
Dag Wieers
September 21, 2003
Packaging software with RPM
Dan Poirier (poirier@us.ibm.com)
Software engineer, IBM
01 Nov 2001

[/os/unix/linux/utilities/package] permanent link

Fri, Jul 29, 2016 4:51 pm

Sat, Mar 26, 2005 10:54 am