Yum repo on cifs mount

Question

What I want to do

Build my yum/dnf repository on a cifs share.

Long version

My windows server is my main file server, and I store my Support/Platforms/Korora22/ directory there for the time being. I have my rpms there, some downloaded and some self-rolled.

I want to host a repository there, but my createrepo . command throws back this error:

[root@linux-05|/mnt/smash/Support/Platforms/Korora22]# createrepo .
Spawning worker 0 with 3 pkgs
Spawning worker 1 with 3 pkgs
Spawning worker 2 with 2 pkgs
Spawning worker 3 with 2 pkgs
Workers Finished
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
Generating sqlite DBs

(process:368): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_timer_stop: assertion 'timer != NULL' failed

(process:368): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_timer_destroy: assertion 'timer != NULL' failed
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py", line 308, in <module>
    main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/usr/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py", line 280, in main
    mdgen.doRepoMetadata()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/createrepo/__init__.py", line 1005, in doRepoMetadata
    rp.getOtherdata(complete_path, csum)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/sqlitecachec.py", line 61, in getOtherdata
    self.repoid))
TypeError: Can not create db_info table: database is locked

/etc/yum.repos.d/bgstack.repo

[bgstack]
name=bgstack
baseurl=file:///mnt/smash/Support/Platforms/Korora22/
gpgcheck=0

Steps I've already tried that did not help

rm -rf /var/lib/rpm/__db*
rpm --rebuilddb

dnf clean all

My /etc/fstab includes this line:

//win-server1/smash       /mnt/smash        cifs     rw,user,uid=bgstack,credentials=/root/.bgstack.example.com,exec,soft

Observe that it will mount my directory as the user bgstack, so I actually umounted and mounted with uid root (effectively, by leaving that part out):

mount -t cifs -o credentials=/root/.bgstack.example.com //win-server1/smash /mnt/smash

It still would not successfully complete a createrepo command.

What appeared to work but is not optimal

This works, but is very clunky.

Host all rpms locally and create the repository there. Then transfer the repo data to the cifs share.

# as root: createrepo does not like regular users
mkdir -p ~/localrepo
cp -pr /mnt/smash/Support/Platforms/Korora22/*rpm ~/localrepo
createrepo ~/localrepo
cp -pr ~/localrepo/repodata /mnt/smash/Support/Platforms/Korora22/

Answer 1

I ran into this problem, and it appears some others are as well. The common factor, is that our repository directories are mounted on a CIFS share with RW access.

Per this RedHat BugZilla: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=429201

What worked for me was modifying my /etc/fstab/ file to include nobrl in my CIFS declaration:

# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Mon Apr 18 15:04:59 2016
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
/dev/mapper/centos-root /                       xfs     defaults        0 0
UUID=a15ce235-0cd8-4890-95ed-9f1f8803e1fc /boot                   xfs     defaults        0 0
/dev/mapper/centos-swap swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
\\\\QNAP\\repo /repo cifs nobrl,rw,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0775,async,noperm,credentials=/root/creds_smb_library_core,uid=5000,gid=6000 0 0

After performing a reboot confirm that the filesystem is mounted from a cold boot, createrepo worked fine.

The nobrl option removes Byte Range Locks from being applied against the mounted filesystem, which allows createrepo to successfully update/access the SQLite database without attempting and failing to achieve a lock.