I managed to perform the new updates via "apt-get upgrade", however now ntpd fails during 
start up, when it tries to use libz.so.1 (I suppose it is a new updated one), but this one 
falls in the bug category.

I suppose the corresponding yum errata info files were not updated in the server, and 
that's why the original "yum upgrade" failure issue.



Ioannis Vranos wrote:

> I installed SL 4 few days ago and it looks nice. Immediately after 
> installation, I run "yum update" however yum was exiting abnormally 
> during the update process. Then I run "yum upgrade" and this worked 
> providing about 300 MB of updates for my installation.
> 
> 
> However now I have seen in "Scientific-Linux-Errata" mailing list 
> archives that there are newer updates like firefox 1.0.6, but these new 
> updates do not show up either in "yum update" or "yum upgrade" and "yum 
> clean all" doesn't fix it.
> 
> Any ideas why?
> 
> 
> 
> Here is my last effort with extra spaces inserted to improve readability:
> 
> [root@localhost ~]# yum clean all
> Cleaning up Everything
> 0 headers removed
> 0 packages removed
> 4 metadata files removed
> 2 cache files removed
> 
> 
> [root@localhost ~]# yum clean all
> Cleaning up Everything
> 0 headers removed
> 0 packages removed
> 0 metadata files removed
> 0 cache files removed
> 
> 
> [root@localhost ~]# yum upgrade
> Setting up Upgrade Process
> Setting up Repos
> sl-base                   100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
> sl-errata                 100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> Reading repository metadata in from local files
> primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================| 476 kB    00:10
> MD Read   : ################################################## 1447/1447
> sl-base   : ################################################## 1447/1447
> primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================|  67 kB    00:01
> MD Read   : ################################################## 201/201
> sl-errata : ################################################## 201/201
> No Packages marked for Update/Obsoletion
> 
> 
> [root@localhost ~]# yum update
> Setting up Update Process
> Setting up Repos
> sl-base                   100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
> sl-errata                 100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
> Reading repository metadata in from local files
> sl-base   : ################################################## 1447/1447
> sl-errata : ################################################## 201/201
> No Packages marked for Update/Obsoletion
> [root@localhost ~]#