How to prevent update from conflicting repo?

Question

On EC2 / Amazon Linux AMI (Centos based), I created /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo:

[nginx]
name=nginx repo
baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/centos/6/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

Then I successfully installed nginx 1.4.2:

sudo yum --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo="nginx" install nginx

Now, when I run sudo yum update, I get:

---> Package nginx.x86_64 0:1.4.2-1.el6.ngx will be updated
---> Package nginx.x86_64 1:1.2.9-1.11.amzn1 will be an update

NO!

How do I permanently block the update? (which is actually a downgrade)

@MichaelHampton As Stefan Lasiewski points out and as I've read [elsewhere](http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/ConflictingRepos#Disable:Onewrongisonetomany), in this case *nginx* got it wrong. By the way, in general, I am very happy with Amazon's Linux AMI, which I configured for a client years ago (Apache, PHP, MySQL, Shell). Now, I set up nginx on my own EC2 instance, for proxying to Node.js projects (incl. WebSockets). — feklee, Aug 20 '13 at 09:51
Actually it's Amazon that screwed this up, by assigning an Epoch to their nginx package. — Michael Hampton, Aug 20 '13 at 13:38
@MichaelHampton Thanks for pointing that out. According to `yum info nginx` (repository `amzn-updates`), the `Epoch` tag is set to a value of 1. The package from repository `nginx` has no epoch tag. — feklee, Aug 20 '13 at 19:18

Stefan Lasiewski · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-12T16:00:24.867

7

Maintainers of third party repositories should name their packages in a way that doesn't interfere with the main repository, otherwise conflicts like this will happen. Conflicts like the above are unprofessional and a sign of poor quality.

Some workarounds are:

YUM priorities

You can use Yum Priorities configure each repo to use a certain priority by assigning priority=N to the repositories listed in the .repo file. Some Yum developers have criticized Yum Priorities. Read the "Cautionary Note" at the bottom.

Excluding packages

You can also exclude packages from certain repositories. So, add something like this to your main repo. Substitute your package names.

[main]
exclude=php* kernel*

edited Jul 12 '16 at 16:00

answered Aug 19 '13 at 23:42

Stefan Lasiewski

23,667
41
132
186

1

Appending `priority=1` to `/etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo` did the trick: `No Packages marked for Update` – feklee Aug 20 '13 at 09:44
Priorities is the only real option you have, since the problem is that Amazon put an Epoch on their nginx packages for no apparent (and probably no good) reason. – Michael Hampton Aug 20 '13 at 13:39
yum-versionlock might be a solution too, but if you don't want to upgrade package from same repo too. – GioMac Aug 20 '13 at 15:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 12 '16 at 07:50

1

You can use yum update-minimal

update-minimal Works like upgrade, but goes to the 'newest' package match which fixes a problem that affects your system

edited Jul 12 '16 at 07:50

David Makogon

2,768
1
20
29

answered Jul 12 '16 at 07:16

Mansur Ul Hasan

262
3
9

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 19 '13 at 22:44

0

You can use the following command to specify packages not to be updated:

yum --exclude=nginx* update

answered Aug 19 '13 at 22:44

larrylampco

103
7

But I do want updates, though only from the nginx repo. – feklee Aug 19 '13 at 22:58

How to prevent update from conflicting repo?

3 Answers3

YUM priorities

Excluding packages