Red Hat Knowledgebase

Release Found:Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 on i386, ia64, and x86_64

Symptom:
Attempting to update my system to the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 packages, up2date fails to resolve dependencies. The error message indicates that the kernel-ib package is required. A sample error message will look like below (also see attached screenshot for sample error message):

  There was a package dependency problem. The message was:
        
        Unresolvable chain of dependencies:
        libibcommon  1.0-1                       requires kernel-ib
        libibumad  1.0-1                         requires kernel-ib
        libibverbs  1.0.3-1                      requires kernel-ib
        libibverbs-utils  1.0.3-1                requires kernel-ib
        libmthca  1.0.2-1                        requires kernel-ib
        libsdp  0.9.0-1                          requires kernel-ib
        opensm  1.2.0-1                          requires kernel-ib
        opensm-libs  1.2.0-1                     requires kernel-ib
      

Solution:
Starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4, OpenIB Infiniband support was separated into multiple packages. One of these packages is called "kernel-ib".

The default configuration for the up2date client will exclude any packages matching the glob "kernel*". To confirm if the settings exclude packages matching the glob "kernel*", run the command:

        # echo | up2date --configure --nox | grep pkgSkipList
        20. pkgSkipList        ['kernel*']

If using a similar configuration as noted above, and would like to install the kernel-ib package, modify the pkgSkipList configuration.

Remove the string "kernel*" from the pkgSkipList by running the command:

        
        # up2date --configure 

Now, run up2date again to upgrade the packages to the latest available packages on RHN.

NOTE: If you would like the up2date client to skip kernel packages in the future, yet continue to update the kernel-ib OpenIB Infiniband package, consider setting the pkgSkipList to the following:

        
        # echo | up2date --configure --nox | grep pkgSkipList
        20. pkgSkipList        ['kernel', 'kernel-smp', 'kernel-hugemem', 'kernel-largesmp']