Red Hat Yum not working out of the box?

Question

I have a server runnning Red Hat Enterprise Linux v5.6 in the cloud. My project constraints do not allow me to use another OS.

When I created the cloud server, I was able to SSH into it and access the shell. I next ran the command:

sudo yum update

But the command failed. About a month ago I created another server with the same machine image and didn't have that error. Why is it failing now? The following is the terminal output

sudo yum update
Loaded plugins: security
Repository rhel-server is listed more than once in the configuration
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 309, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 178, in main
    result, resultmsgs = base.doCommands()
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 345, in doCommands
    self._getTs(needTsRemove)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 101, in _getTs
    self._getTsInfo(remove_only)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 112, in _getTsInfo
    pkgSack = self.pkgSack
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 662, in <lambda>
    pkgSack = property(fget=lambda self: self._getSacks(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 502, in _getSacks
    self.repos.populateSack(which=repos)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/repos.py", line 260, in populateSack
    sack.populate(repo, mdtype, callback, cacheonly)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 168, in populate
    if self._check_db_version(repo, mydbtype):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 226, in _check_db_version
    return repo._check_db_version(mdtype)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1233, in _check_db_version
    repoXML = self.repoXML
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1406, in <lambda>
    repoXML = property(fget=lambda self: self._getRepoXML(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1398, in _getRepoXML
    self._loadRepoXML(text=self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1388, in _loadRepoXML
    return self._groupLoadRepoXML(text, ["primary"])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1372, in _groupLoadRepoXML
    if self._commonLoadRepoXML(text):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1208, in _commonLoadRepoXML
    result = self._getFileRepoXML(local, text)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 989, in _getFileRepoXML
    cache=self.http_caching == 'all')
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 826, in _getFile
    http_headers=headers,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py", line 412, in urlgrab
    return self._mirror_try(func, url, kw)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py", line 398, in _mirror_try
    return func_ref( *(fullurl,), **kwargs )
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line 936, in urlgrab
    return self._retry(opts, retryfunc, url, filename)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line 854, in _retry
    r = apply(func, (opts,) + args, {})
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line 922, in retryfunc
    fo = URLGrabberFileObject(url, filename, opts)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line 1010, in __init__
    self._do_open()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line 1093, in _do_open
    fo, hdr = self._make_request(req, opener)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py", line 1202, in _make_request
    fo = opener.open(req)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 358, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 376, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 337, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/M2Crypto/m2urllib2.py", line 82, in https_open
    h.request(req.get_method(), req.get_selector(), req.data, headers)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/httplib.py", line 810, in request
    self._send_request(method, url, body, headers)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/httplib.py", line 833, in _send_request
    self.endheaders()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/httplib.py", line 804, in endheaders
    self._send_output()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/httplib.py", line 685, in _send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/httplib.py", line 652, in send
    self.connect()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/M2Crypto/httpslib.py", line 47, in connect
    self.sock.connect((self.host, self.port))
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/M2Crypto/SSL/Connection.py", line 174, in connect
    ret = self.connect_ssl()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/M2Crypto/SSL/Connection.py", line 167, in connect_ssl
    return m2.ssl_connect(self.ssl, self._timeout)
M2Crypto.SSL.SSLError: certificate verify failed

Answer 1

You should read the message. It says Repository rhel-server is listed more than once in the configuration. So delete the duplicate entry and then go ahead.

Delete the one with the failing SSL certificate (untrusted or compromised source).

Answer 2

The "Repository is listed more than once in the configuration" error message could some times be caused due to a bug in the yum-rhn-plugin package which yum relies on. I once had the same issues and was able to resolve it by downgrading yum-rhn-plugin to a previous version.

rpm -Uvh --oldpackage yum-rhn-plugin-0.5.2-3.el5.noarch.rpm