How to Fix Common yum Errors on CentOS 7: 404, Failed Installs, and Missing Python

Introduction

This article explains how to troubleshoot common yum command failures on CentOS 7.

1. yum returns 404 error

Check that the yum repository is correctly configured, for example by downloading a repo file from Alibaba Cloud.

wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo http://mirrors.aliyun.com/repo/Centos-7.repo

If the error mentions the $releasever variable, verify that the centos-release package is installed: rpm -qa | grep centos-release If it is missing, install it:

wget https://mirrors.aliyun.com/centos/7/os/x86_64/Packages/centos-release-7-7.1908.0.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm
rpm -ivh centos-release-7-7.1908.0.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm

2. yum install fails with “failed” error

Example error when installing telnet:

ERROR UNpacking rpm package 1：telnet-0.17-64.e17.x86_64
error：unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/bin/telnet；5e785bc7：cpio：open

Check the attributes of the target directory; an immutable (i) attribute can prevent writing: lsattr /usr/bin Remove the immutable flag:

chattr -i /usr/bin

3. yum reports missing Python interpreter

yum is a Python script; if /usr/bin/python is missing, yum cannot run.

Inspect the yum script header: cat /usr/bin/yum Check whether the Python binary exists: ls -al /usr/bin/python If the file is absent or renamed, restore it or reinstall Python. Example steps:

List installed Python packages: rpm -qa | grep python Check existing Python binaries: ls -al /usr/bin/python* If Python was removed, download the packages on another similar system and copy them to the affected host:

mkdir /python/
yum install python --downloadonly --downloaddir=/python/
scp /python/* root@<em>host</em>:/tmp/
cd /tmp
rpm -ivh *