UMBC RedHat Linux Errata

The following are a list of known issues with the current UMBC RedHat Distribution:

• Machine fails to boot when /tmp is a symlink outside the root filesystem after installing the latest updates to RHEL 3 update 4

  If you have moved the location of /tmp outside of the root filesystem, such as making /tmp a symbolic link to /var/tmp, where /var is a separate file system, you machine may fail to boot after installing the latest updates. This problem was introduced in the updates for RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 4. Consult this page for a patch to fix this problem. The default configuration of UMBC RHEL should not be effected.

• up2date is no longer working / Error Messages from up2date

  There is a problem that was introduced by the RedHat Automated updating process that causes the following error:

  rpmdb: Program version 4.2 doesn't match environment version
  error: db4 error(22) from dbenv->open: Invalid argument
  error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Invalid argument (22)
  error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/sbin/up2date", line 1174, in ?
      sys.exit(main() or 0)
    File "/usr/sbin/up2date", line 656, in main
      ret = sanityChecks(fromDaemon, hasGui)
    File "/usr/sbin/up2date", line 288, in sanityChecks
      if cfg["useGPG"] and gpgUtils.checkGPGInstallation() == 2:
    File "gpgUtils.py", line 31, in checkGPGInstallation
    File "gpgUtils.py", line 75, in findKey
    File "rpmUtils.py", line 102, in installedHeadersNameVersion
  TypeError: rpmdb open failed

  This caused by the presence of stale lock files. Run the following command as root on your machine,

  rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*

  This will resolve the above problem with up2date.

• Booting without Internet Connection / Stuck on RedHat Registration during First Bootup

  This problem is caused by a package called firstboot. This package runs during the first boot of the machine to do some additional configurations that require your input. While most of these configuration tasks do not require a network connection, the Registration section does. The following steps will turn off firstboot:

  1. Reboot your machine
  2. When the grub screen displays, hightlight the line to boot RedHat Enterprise and type "e"
  3. Next Hightlight the line that starts with kernel type "e"
  4. Add " -s" to the end of the line and press <Enter> key.
  5. Type "b"
  6. Once the machine finishes booting you should have a root shell prompt that looks like sh-2.05#
  7. At the shell prompt, type: chkconfig --del firstboot
  8. Finally, type shutdown -r now which will reboot your machine

  This should resolve the issue with firstboot.

  Please Note that once you have configured your networking, it is strongly advised that you run firstboot. Once firstboot has started, just follow the steps. Please note that it may take some time to register and install all of the latest updates. The time for registration and installation of updates is contigent on the speed of your network connection. If you are using the UMBC Campus Network, this should between 10 and 20 minutes.

  We currently working on a solution to resolve this issue.

• Gnome Setting Daemon Error

  Currently, there is an error generated during login related the "Gnome Setting Daemon". This does not appear to effect the functioning of the machine, though all of the possible Gnome options have not been explored. We are aware of the issue and we are working to find a solution to this problem.

• No AFS when AFS client was selected

  The initial version of UMBC RedHat Linux turned off AFS during the post install configuration. This has been corrected in the latest version of UMBC RedHat. If you have this problem, this can simply be corrected by the following command as root, chkconfig --add afs. This will turn AFS back on at your next bootup.