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How to fix duplicate packages in yum

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From time to time, the yum package manager may encounter issues with duplicate packages that are erroneously installed on a system. This manifests in a yum update going awry, telling us something along the lines of this:

yum update
...
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: ntp-4.2.6p5-22.el7.centos.2.x86_64 (@updates)
           Requires: ntpdate = 4.2.6p5-22.el7.centos.2
           Removing: ntpdate-4.2.6p5-22.el7.centos.2.x86_64 (@updates)
               ntpdate = 4.2.6p5-22.el7.centos.2
           Updated By: ntpdate-4.2.6p5-25.el7.centos.x86_64 (base)
               ntpdate = 4.2.6p5-25.el7.centos
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
** Found 41 pre-existing rpmdb problem(s), 'yum check' output follows:
// huge scary list of packages follows

You may at times install all other packages via yum update –skip-broken, but it will still leave some trouble on the system. Best to take care of it.

Here’s how I’ve managed to do it on many occasions:

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How to install a free SSL Certificate in Plesk Onyx

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In this episode I’ll explain how to add a free SSL Certificate for web traffic in Plesk Onyx. First we’ll enable the Let’s Encrypt extension in Plesk, then we’ll create the certificate and prepare our subscription for SSL traffic. And finally, we’ll tweak two values in the WordPress database so that all requests will be … Read more

How to use variables in a BASH shell script

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Here’s how to use simple variables in BASH shell scripts. It appears there are no data types, and everything’s a string (correct me if I’m wrong). We can define a variable by first setting it to a value, then later refer to that value with a dollar sign in front of the variable name. Here’s … Read more

How to install PHP from source on CentOS

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I have recently installed PHP 7 from source on a fresh minimal CentOS 7 box. No previous version of PHP was installed, and I thought I’d give 7 a spin. There were a few pitfalls I hadn’t come across before, so here’s what worked for me. Downloading and extracting the source code It sounds crazy, … Read more

Upgrade Trouble: when WordPress is asking for FTP details, but there’s no FTP server on your system

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I was working on a CentOS 7 server the other day that had a LAMP stack installed. It was used to host only a single instance of WordPress. Upgrading themes and plugins from the admin interface worked fine, but curiously, WordPress core upgrades did not. Instead, WordPress was asking for FTP details every time, which also … Read more