As of Feb 2009, the RHEL5.3 yum repository has a cyclic dependency in some java packages that may be installed as dependencies by some openoffice.org packages. This will cause yum to be unable to update.
openoffice.org applications are java-based, and some of them require a java-SDK in addition to the normal java system. RHEL 5 provides a bunch of different java packages from many sources (Sun, IBM, BEA, etc….). If you don’t have an SDK installed when installing some openofice.org packages, yum will select one for you in order to fulfill dependencies. Beginning in RHEL 5.3, yum defaults to choosing the java sdk package from BEA if not instructed otherwise.
The java-1.x.x-bea packages, unfortunately, currently are involved in a cyclic dependency – which makes yum very unhappy when told to update.
To avoid this, install the Sun SDK package ahead of time:
#> yum install java-1.6.0-sun-devel
…after this, install whatever openoffice package you need!
Our automatic package setup script (which installs the packages and apps used on all default astronet machines) at /etc/secret/clientconfig/install-programs/install_packages.sh has been updated to reflect this problem by specifying the sun package explicitly. Only machines where packages are being installed by hand should need to worry about this.
–James
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