[Yum] I broke yum. Can't make it work again.

[Barbara Pennacchi]

Hello yummers.

(If all this may be a FAQ, forgive me: I tried looking in the ML archives  
but, without a chance to search it, takes tooo looong to find any relevant  
email...)

I'm not yet close to pulling my hair (besides, it's too short to be  
pulled!), but I'm really annoyed as hell.

I used yum 2.0.4-1 to upgrade a RH8 box to RH9 and to keep updated another  
RH9 box when it went EOL. No trouble in both boxes.

Then I updated python from 2.2.2-26 to 2.2.3-26 with a plain rpm -Uvh. And  
Yum stopped working. Tried updating yum to 2.0.7-1. Duh. Still broken.

Broken means that everytime I try to launch it it spits me back this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/usr/bin/yum", line 22, in ?
   import yummain
 File "/usr/share/yum/yummain.py", line 22, in ?
   import clientStuff
 File "/usr/share/yum/clientStuff.py", line 25, in ?
   import pkgaction
 File "/usr/share/yum/pkgaction.py", line 25, in ?
   import rpmUtils
 File "/usr/share/yum/rpmUtils.py", line 10, in ?
   from urlgrabber import URLGrabError
 File "/usr/share/yum/urlgrabber.py", line 21, in ?
   import urllib2
 File "/usr/lib/python2.2/urllib2.py", line 101, in ?
   import ftplib
 File "/usr/lib/python2.2/ftplib.py", line 68, in ?
   all_errors = (Error, socket.error, IOError, EOFError)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'error'

rpm -qa \*python\* gives:
rpm-python-4.2-0.69
python-2.2.3-26  <---(that's the python that broke yum,
                      previously it was python-2.2.2-26)
python-optik-1.4-2
libxml2-python-2.5.4-3.rh9
mod_python-3.0.1-4

I did a rpm -V yum python and even a rpm -V -vv yum python but all files
seem to be OK. except that yum keeps NOT working.

Tried also rpm -rebuilddb (as suggested in Fedora Legacy's ML)

Tried (on the RH9 box) to force the reinstall of python2.2.2-26, too.

I have in /usr/bin/ three matches for python*:
/usr/bin/python
/usr/bin/python2 (symlink to the first)
/usr/bin/python2.2

Tried editing all references in /usr/bin/yum and/or /usr/share/yum/*.py  
from #!/usr/bin/python to one of the other 2 entries.

Tried also rpm -e yum, delete /usr/share/yum and /var/cache/yum and  
reinstall it back. Nuthin'. Still the same ol'spittle as above.

The only thing I didn't try (yet) was to move the symlink of /usr/bin/
python2 from /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python2.2

Any suggestions and hints would be appreciated.

(Don't ask me to do a voodoo dance. I can't dance worth a zit. :-)

cheers,
b.
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| Barbara Pennacchi                          b.pennacchi at istc.cnr.it |
|                 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche                 |
|         Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione          |
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