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I am currently having some trouble with yum through sudo. For some reason, it does not seem to work:

aron@graviton [/var/log]# sudo yum clean all
There was a problem importing one of the Python modules
required to run yum. The error leading to this problem was:

   /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/datetime.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory

Please install a package which provides this module, or
verify that the module is installed correctly.

It's possible that the above module doesn't match the
current version of Python, which is:
2.4.3 (#1, Sep  3 2009, 15:37:37)
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)]

If you cannot solve this problem yourself, please go to
the yum faq at:
  http://wiki.linux.duke.edu/YumFaq

The strange thing, however, is that it works fine when I gain root privileges through sudo -i first.

Any ideas what might be causing this problem?

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What does it do with sudo -s instead of sudo -i? – ℝaphink Feb 21 '12 at 13:19
@Raphink sudo -i is not the problem. When executing the command sudo -s yum clean all, the problem persists, though. – Aron Rotteveel Feb 21 '12 at 14:06
@Raphink I deleted my previous comment; I was too quick to assume that the problem was solved. My bad :) – Aron Rotteveel Feb 21 '12 at 14:07
Hehe. By sudo -s, I meant to do sudo -s; yum clean all. Did you try that? – ℝaphink Feb 21 '12 at 14:09
@Raphink yes, does not work and is a bit 'quirky': it basically puts me in a root-environment, then executes the command when exiting the shell. When I use sudo -s | yum clean all (which I think is what you ment), it does not work and waits for me to break. – Aron Rotteveel Feb 22 '12 at 8:33

5 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

I don't understand why this question is featured now, but it seems to me that the problem lies with resource limits. You should run ulimit -v (and perhaps ulimit -m too) and check whether you have any memory limits enforced, as most likely sudo (without -i) won't clear them.

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this helped me, I've set ulimit -m unlimited and it worked. – w00t Dec 28 '12 at 13:55
up vote 0 down vote

It looks like it's lacking something in the environment that root has. Does 'sudo su - -c "yum clean all"' work?

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It seems like sudo - is not working on CentOS. Getting sudo: '-' requires an argument. It seems like a missing PATH entry indeed. Besides altering the sudo alias to include the path, is there anything else I can do? – Aron Rotteveel Apr 29 '10 at 11:48
Edited my response, I had the command wrong. – sinping Apr 29 '10 at 12:25
Actually, have you checked the permissions on those python modules? Does your account have read access to them at least? – sinping Apr 29 '10 at 12:33
Checked it and yes. The modules are chmodded 0755 and are readable. – Aron Rotteveel Jun 30 '10 at 6:36
up vote 0 down vote

Perhaps SELinux is to blame. Is it enabled? Try getenforce if you are unsure about that.

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Thanks for the reply, but nope. Not running SELinux. – Aron Rotteveel Aug 2 '10 at 7:22
up vote 0 down vote

Try to use strace to look what's wrong.

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up vote 0 down vote accepted

It seems this problem has been solved. I have evaded this problem by simply using sudo -i but just tried using sudo combined with yum and it works. I have no idea what solved it, but I assume a package update has implemented a fix for this issue.

For reference sake, here are my current versions:

  • Sudo version 1.7.2p1
  • Yum version 3.2.22
  • Kernel 2.6.18-308.16.1.el5
  • CentOS 5.5
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