Upgrade to Usage Meter 4.8 fails due to deprecated packages

Products

• VMware Usage Meter

Issue/Introduction

• This article explains a possible scenario in which the upgrade to UM 4.8 fails due to unsupported or unexpected libraries detected in the appliance.
• Upgrade fails and you see errors similar to the following:

<timestamp> Generating tdnf cache on Photon OS 4.0 Refreshing metadata for: 'vCloud Usage Meter Update repository for Photon Linux ISO(x86_64)' Metadata cache created. <timestamp> Finding packages in the target repo. This may take several minutes. <timestamp> Error: Packages - <package_1> <package_2> ... <package_n> - are not available in the target repo for OS upgrade. Please provide the correct repo with the required packages. Original list of RPMs and RPM DB are stored in /tmp/photon-upgrade-tZo, please provide contents of that folder along with system journal logs for analysis; these logs can be captured using command- # /usr/bin/journalctl -xa > /tmp/photon-upgrade-tZo/journal.log Cannot continue. Aborting. Exit code : 22 Upgrade to 4.8.0.0-23222951 failed.

Environment

VMware vCloud Usage Meter 4.x

Cause

The Usage Meter 4.8 is based on Photon 4, and during the upgrade process, each library is validated for a suitable replacement from the update repo.
Now, in case some libraries do not have a suitable replacement (they have been deprecated) in the new Photon 4 repo, the update process will terminate.

Resolution

1. In case the update to UM 4.8 fails with an error similar to the one above, then execute the following command as root to uninstall the packages reported in the error:
   
      rpm -e --nodeps <package_1>
      rpm -e --nodeps <package_2>
      ...
      rpm -e --nodeps <package_n>
   
   
2. Then perform the upgrade following the instructions provided here:  In-Place Upgrade of vCloud Usage Meter