yum not able to install a package: says "Nothing to do""

Published: by

  • Categories:

So, I was struggling with this error a while back.

[root@mypc yum.repos.d]# yum search perl-Locale-gettext
Loaded plugins: dellsysid, fastestmirror
Repository tmz-puppet is listed more than once in the configuration
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * atomic: www6.atomicorp.com
 * base: mirror.trouble-free.net
 * epel: mirrors.tummy.com
 * extras: eq-centosrepo.hopto.org
 * rpmforge: mirror.hmc.edu
 * updates: mirror.team-cymru.org
=================================================================== N/S Matched: perl-Locale-gettext ====================================================================
perl-Locale-gettext.x86_64 : Internationalization for Perl

 Name and summary matches only, use "search all" for everything.
[root@mypc yum.repos.d]

So, searching shows that the package perl-Locale-gettext is present but when I try to install it, it says "Nothing to do".

[root@mypc yum.repos.d]# yum install perl-Locale-gettext
Loaded plugins: dellsysid, fastestmirror
Repository tmz-puppet is listed more than once in the configuration
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * atomic: mir01.syntis.net
 * base: mirrors.gigenet.com
 * epel: mirror.us.leaseweb.net
 * extras: centos.mirror.lstn.net
 * rpmforge: mirror.hmc.edu
 * updates: centos.mirror.choopa.net
Setting up Install Process
Nothing to do
[root@mypc yum.repos.d]# 

Isn't this strange? I wasted 3 hours on this, tried what not!

So, the issue was that the package perl-Locale-gettext was obsoleted by perl-gettext & I had perl-gettext already installed. We shifted some infrastructure to Centos6 and the old boxes had Locale package installed. And as we used puppet to manage the boxes, it was throwing the cannot install package error. But, yum was not kind enough to say that. I only got to know about that after I tried installing the package by doing rpm -ivh /path/to/package. ` `` `