VNC on FC4 problem... Can't find libstdc++ dependency!

December 1, 2007 1:57 PM

LinuxNewbieFilter: I'm using Fedora Core 4 on a server. I'm SSH'd in. I'm attempting to install VNC (vnc-server). It appears that I'm entering everything in correctly but it can't find the content (specifically the libstdc++ component) to install. None of the mirrors are working either. Help!

I'm typing:

yum -y install vnc-server

It starts up correctly, but when it goes to install the libstdc++ dependency, it runs into a problem.

http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:47:40 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.

Then it tries a bunch of mirrors that don't work, either.

Eventually it says:

Error: failure: libstdc++-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm from updates-released: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

What can I do? Can I add more mirrors manually? Can I manually download and setup that dependency? I'm lost here...

posted by defenestration to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I haven't used Red Hat in ages, but if I got something like that in Debian, it would be from an outdated catalog... that is, I was trying to download a version of the file that had been replaced by something newer.

If you issue whatever command yum uses to update its local catalog of what's available, that's quite likely to fix the problem.
posted by Malor at 2:10 PM on December 1, 2007

Ok, I looked it up. Try this command:

yum clean headers

and then try your VNC download.
posted by Malor at 2:16 PM on December 1, 2007

(oh, and just in case, try the VNC install at least twice.)
posted by Malor at 2:18 PM on December 1, 2007

Response by poster: Done... Result:

Cleaning up Headers
36 headers removed

Then I try installing vnc-server and it still eventually gets to:

---> Downloading header for libstdc++ to pack into transaction set.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:10 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:10 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:11 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:11 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:12 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:12 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:13 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:13 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:14 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:14 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/4/i386/libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:20:15 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
Content-Length: 6113
Content-Type: text/html
Via: 1.0 www.mirrorservice.org
Connection: close
Trying other mirror.
Error: failure: libstdc++-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm from updates-released: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

Hrmph. I'm guessing there's a way to manually download and install libstdc++-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm but I just don't know how.
posted by defenestration at 2:25 PM on December 1, 2007

Try here

(which I got just by googling for the file name, then finding the x86 version), with the command rpm -i libstdc++-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm (or whatever filename you save it to).
posted by gsteff at 2:36 PM on December 1, 2007

I don't know Fedora personally, but with a little investigation I know what your problem is.

Going to the URL their download script is supposed to redirect you to a mirror. So you have set "download.fedoraproject.org", but you end up at (for instance) "mirror.lib.ucdavis.edu". The problem is that the redirect script on the Fedora website is broken.

Copy the URL above into any browser. You'll notice on the end that it says "libstdc%2B%2B-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm". Now hit enter and let the page load. You'll get a 404, but your URL changes to "libstdc%20%20-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm". What's going on?

The problem is the "++" in the package name. For URL encoding, "+" means space. So if you really want a "+", then you have to hex encode it as "%2B". But the redirect script on the Fedora site incorrectly double decodes the filename. So on the first pass it changes "%2B" to "+", then on the second pass it changes "+" to " " (a space). When it re-encodes the filename for redirect, it sees a space and changes that to "%20" (an alternate encoding for a space).

I'm not sure how you fix this. If this were Gentoo I'd just download the package manually and stick it in my distfiles directory. Presumably, you can do something similar on Fedora. Here's a working URL: libstdc++-4.0.2-8.fc4.i386.rpm.

But someone should also notify the Fedora guys that they horribly broke their mirroring redirect.
posted by sbutler at 2:39 PM on December 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

gsteff has it right. If you just download the RPM file it's looking for you can install manually. Just give it the filename rather than the package name. Once it's installed, it will be in the database and the vnc install will know it doesn't need that dependency. Mirror problems are a hassle but you can usually take care of it this way.
posted by MasterShake at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2007

Response by poster: Ah, thank you.

Got it working!
posted by defenestration at 3:29 PM on December 1, 2007

Note that FC4 is old and should be considered out of date. Fedora doesn't support it anymore, etc. You should consider any upgrade options.
posted by chengjih at 4:23 PM on December 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

So the Fedora project uses Debian on their servers?

Heh.
posted by evariste at 6:30 PM on December 1, 2007

Seconding chengjih. They just release Fedora 8 a couple of weeks ago. With that release, they dropped support for Fedora Core 6. FC4 hasn't been supported for awhile now.
posted by coreb at 12:40 PM on December 2, 2007