Why won't my package upgrade with yum?

Question

I'm trying to upgrade a package using yum on Fedora 8. The package is elfutils. Here's what I have installed locally:

$ yum info elfutils
Installed Packages
Name   : elfutils
Arch   : x86_64
Version: 0.130
Release: 3.fc8
Size   : 436 k
Repo   : installed
Summary: A collection of utilities and DSOs to handle compiled objects

There's a bug in this version, and according to the bug report, a newer version has been pushed to the Fedora 8 stable repository. But, if I try to update:

$ yum update elfutils
Setting up Update Process
Could not find update match for elfutils
No Packages marked for Update

Here are my repositories:

$ yum repolist enabled
repo id              repo name                                 status
InstallMedia         Fedora 8                                  enabled
fedora               Fedora 8 - x86_64                         enabled
updates              Fedora 8 - x86_64 - Updates               enabled

What am I missing?

Answer 1

If you look at the listing of the repository packages directory at

Link to Fedora Repository

You will see that you have the latest version in that directory, which is why yum is not upgrading your package. This is the same in both the i386 and x86_64 package directories. So the reason that you are not seeing an update is that there is not a more current version in the repository yet. The notification in the bug report that a new version is in the repository is incorrect.

Answer 2

OK, I figured it out. I needed to upgrade the fedora-release package. That allowed me to see all of the updated packages. Thanks to ethyreal for pointing me to the Yum upgrade FAQ.

Answer 3

i know this seems silly but did you try removing it and reinstalling?

yum remove elfutils

then

yum install elfutils

alternatively you could try updating everything:

yum update

...if their is no update marked in the repository you might try:

yum upgrade