[PLUG] Yum is immortal

[Dale Snell]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:32:56 -0700
John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:

> This evening I was trying to install a program from source. Yeah, I
> should know better. But I have what appear to be superb detailed
> instructions. Except that the instructions are for Ubuntu so they are
> full of apt-get commands, but generally all I have to do is replace
> apt-get with yum.
> 
> There was a command:
> 
> sudo yum install qt4-dev-tools libqt4-opengl-dev libqtwebkit-dev

If you're using yum, I assume *cough*cough* that you're using a
Red Hat/Fedora based system of some sort.  In that case, the
development packages are labeled *-devel, not *-dev.  The latter
is Debian/Ubuntu.

> It executed without error, but after 15 minutes I assumed it was hung, 
> so I killed it with Ctrl-Z.

<Ctrl-Z> _suspends_ a program, it doesn't kill it.  You can do
things like run the ever-popular program "foo", then suspend it
with <ctrl-z>.  After that, you can put it in the background with
"bg %1" or back into the foreground with "fg %1".  (The job number
[%1, here] is reported when you suspend the job.)

> Then I tried it again, but just the
> qt4-dev-tools. This gave me:
> 
> Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another copy is running as pid 20774.
> Another app is currently holding the yum lock; waiting for it to
> exit... The other application is: yum
> 
> So I tried 'sudo kill 20774' and the command executed without error,
> but yum is still running. I tried killing 20774 from sudo top, and
> again it executed without error, and still failed to kill yum.

The kill command wants a signal with which to chastise the errant
program.  -TERM should abort most programs.  If not, the old
standby of -KILL should do it.  E.g., "kill -KILL 20774".  You
only need the sudo if the program isn't being run by you.

> I can't do anything until I figure out how to drive a stake through
> yum's heart. Any suggestions?

$ ps aux | grep -i yum
(returned info)
$ kill -TERM <yum_process_number>

That ought to do it.

--Dale

--
"Well, most people would agree that censors are a silly breed.
In fact, it surprises me how they ever manage to breed at all."
    -- Max Headroom