Mageia forum

maybe a solution to : rpm installations fail when newer kernel version already installed

A few days ago I made a new installation of Mageia 9 Plasma. Using MCC. Chose media, full update.
installed several programs like Thunderbirds . made it work just as my old installtion by "pushing under" a symlink to my mail profile.
made several changes to Plasma setup.
Then I wanted to install VirtualBox and the installation complained as reported in Bugs (33005) : "newer kernel version already installed"
At this point it would require much work to reinstall , do installation of all programs and then do a complete update.

In MCC - install software I then tried in the search field to write "Virtualbox" and got a longer list of VirtualBox software and when I selected VirtualBox I could see all the dependacies to be installed and I could un-select the offending kernel. Then it installed with no problem.

The same may also help when installing other programs : write the name in the search-field.

Best regards.

My take on reinstalling is to during install create a user I only use for install work.
Reboot, into that user, update, install programs - while retrieving main user /home subdir from backup.
Create the main user with same ID, groups etc as original.
When backup is restored: log out, and into main user.
Magic.

Thank you for the tip regarding wrong kernel proposed when installing VitualBox - added to Bug 33005.

Never seen something like you describe. It might help if you would add some more details on what repos you had enabled and how you tried to install Virtualbox the first time.

Or asking the other way around, how do those two descriptions actually differ to you, what did you search for in the first place ?

kajosim wrote:Then I wanted to install VirtualBox and the installation complained as reported in Bugs (33005) : "newer kernel version already installed"
[...]
In MCC - install software I then tried in the search field to write "Virtualbox" and got a longer list of VirtualBox software

Thanks for answers.

My repros are basic : core , nofree , tainted and 32bit the same. Plus core backports because I imagine that if a backport is made to core then it should be OK.
That is the only backport based on experience!

When I got the "newer kernel version already installed" I de-selected core backport but that did not make a difference.

I tried to search for a solution and in the Mageia bug reports I saw 2 bug reports about the issue. The one I mentioned is the newest.

Usually when I install programs I use MCC > Software Management > Install and Remove > where I in the left pane select a category and look through the list of programs in the right pane.
Wanting to install VirtualBox I select category "Emulators" and in the right pane the choices shown is virtualbox and virtualbox-guest-additions .
So I can only choose virtualbox and doing so it shows everything to be installed, but I can not do anything to what is to be installed and pressing APPLY gives the error.

On the other hand if you in the top search field type "virtualbox" you get a list that also include a SDK and all the kernels so you are able to deselect the offending kernel.

When you know it, I see it as a nice feature of MCC.
If you get something offending to be installed, try to search for the program to be installed and see if you should be able to deselect the offending.

Thank you for the notes.

kajosim wrote:When I got the "newer kernel version already installed" I de-selected core backport but that did not make a difference.

Probably not this problem, but FYI just de-selecting backport repo does not work fully, it need to be removed. Bug 31208