Knowledge Base

I had to fix an aborted dnf update. My previous post on this topic

sudo dnf remove $( sudo dnf list installed --showduplicates $( sudo dnf list installed --showduplicates | sort | uniq -w35 -D | awk '/^[a-zA-Z]/{print $1}' | sort | uniq | grep -vE 'kernel|saned' ) | awk '$0 !~ /Packages/{split($1,b,".");if($2 > a[b[1]]){a[b[1]]=$2"."b[2]}} END {for (key in a) {print key"-"a[key]} }' )

Walkthrough of the commands

sudo dnf list installed --showduplicates | sort | uniq -w35 -D | awk '/^[a-zA-Z]/{print $1}' | sort | uniq | grep -vE 'kernel|saned'

Show all installed packages, and then show only the duplicates (up to the first 35 characters; having to take a guess here), and remove any saned and kernel packages. I don't know why I had to exclude saned: Perhaps I wanted both x86_64 and i386 packages for saned.

sudo dnf list installed --showduplicates $ABOVEVALUES | awk '$0 !~ /Packages/{split($1,b,".");if($2 > a[b[1]]){a[b[1]]=$2"."b[2]}} END {for (key in a) {print key"-"a[key]} }'

So, list the output from the previous statement including duplicates, and then use awk to find the highest version number of each named package and store it to a buffer. Then display that whole buffer at the end. So this now shows only the exact name and version (NEVRA, partially) of what to remove. So this whole process is here to roll back the partially-updated changes.

sudo dnf remove $ABOVEVALUES

And now remove those packages. This should reset, so that we can then perform a regular upgrade at some later point.

references

1. awk array in END https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/183279/how-to-view-all-the-content-in-an-awk-array/183280#183280
2. Prior use of associative arrays in awk
3. prior use of dnf --showduplicates but that didn't work this time
4. discussion on NEVRA https://slashterix.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/rpm-version-comparison/