On Sun, 2007-07-01 at 01:54 +0300, Daniel Feiglin wrote:

John E. Perry wrote:

...

Hi,

My opensuse updater suddenly started showing the yellow triangle with the exclamation point a few days ago. When I try to clear it, it exits with the message "Another process is accessing the package database. Package management cannot be used now."

ps -e | grep ast

shows only something called "master" running, so it doesn't appear to be yast.

I can't get either the updater or yast to run without rebooting the machine. What else could be locking the database?

John Perry

I've seen this happen, usually after having done something under yast related to software management or update. This works, without booting:

As root -

Ensure that the updater applet is NOT running (well, it wouldn't be in your case)

ps -ef | grep yast

If you have a copy of yast running someplace, exit it , or kill it. (kill -9 <pid>)

Please do not use -9 except as a last resort. Using -9 tells the parent process to exit without regard to any child process that may be running. The best way is to just use kill <pid>. If that doesn't work then use kill -1 <pid>, and if that still doesn't work then use kill -9 <pid>. You'll leave yourself with a more stable running system that way.

ps -ef | grep y2base

Same thing.

ps -ef | grep zyp

You probably DO have a detached instance of zypper (the updater) running.

Kill it.

Re-run the starter applet. It should come up and start an immediate update check.

I just did all this stuff half an hour ago.

I hope that helps,

-- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 2007-06-30 19:13, John E. Perry wrote:

<snip>

(Thanks, Ken, I did know better than to follow Daniel's advice on kill -9, although I have in the past gone straight from kill to kill -9. I'll have to read up on kill to see what -1 is).

1 is a HUP -- "kill -l" will print a list of all signals. -- Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. -- François de La Rochefoucauld -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

John E. Perry wrote:

Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 2007-06-30 19:13, John E. Perry wrote:

...

<snip>

(Thanks, Ken, I did know better than to follow Daniel's advice on kill -9, although I have in the past gone straight from kill to kill -9. I'll have to read up on kill to see what -1 is). 1 is a HUP -- "kill -l" will print a list of all signals.

Ah. So, using kill -l, I see SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGTRAP, SIGABRT, and SIGKILL, all of which seem to be closely related. So I still have some reading to do to understand it and know what to do (as opposed to following blindly the advice of people who maybe really know what's going on :-).

Wait a minute! there's no description of kill with no parameter. and man, as usual, has no useful information.

The information you seek doesn't exist. You can't send a signal without sending any signal. IOW the "kill" command would be better named "signal" because what the command does is send a signal of your choice. The signal is most often some sort of kill signal, which probably led to its name, but it can also send "wake up" or "resume" signals and others as well. It always seems strange to type "killall -SIGCONT <procname>" to resume a process... Joe -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 30 June 2007 20:58, John E. Perry wrote:

Darryl Gregorash wrote:

...

On 2007-06-30 19:13, John E. Perry wrote:

...

<snip>

(Thanks, Ken, I did know better than to follow Daniel's advice on kill -9, although I have in the past gone straight from kill to kill -9. I'll have to read up on kill to see what -1 is).

1 is a HUP -- "kill -l" will print a list of all signals.

Ah. So, using kill -l, I see SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGTRAP, SIGABRT, and SIGKILL, all of which seem to be closely related. So I still have some reading to do to understand it and know what to do (as opposed to following blindly the advice of people who maybe really know what's going on :-).

Wait a minute! there's no description of kill with no parameter. and man, as usual, has no useful information.

Keep in mind that "kill" is one of those commands that exists both as a free-standing binary executable in /bin/kill and as a BASH built-in. As with other commands that live this dual existence, they two are not entirely compatible. Brief information on the BASH built-in is available via "help kill" (only within BASH) or in the man page. /bin/kill -t might help a bit with understanding the different signals, but probably not much. A lot of their meaning and use is somewhat arbitrary and by convention. SIGHUP is generated by tty drivers when the RS-232 DTR signal is deasserted (or the cable disconnected) and by the pseudo-tty driver when no process has master-side open. SIGTERM is used to request a process to shut down gracefully, but immediately. SIGKILL is an unconditional and immediate death, with the target given no attempt to clean up. SIGINT and SIGQUIT are generated by the tty driver when you type (usually) CTRL-C and CTRL-\, resp. And so on.

More googling, I guess.

jp

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org