While I was performing an upgrade of Fedora 41 to 42 on my laptop, I noticed there was package installed since Fedora 38. This package, zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch, needed to be removed as it blocked this Fedora 42 upgrade.
TL;DR - The solution is to use --noscripts option with rpm command. If you want to see how the zfs-dkms package removed, follow along.
Here’s the info about the package:
root@benjo:/etc/yum.repos.d# dnf info zfs-dkms
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Installed packages
Name : zfs-dkms
Epoch : 0
Version : 2.2.0
Release : 1.fc38
Architecture : noarch
Installed size : 56.9 MiB
Source : zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.src.rpm
From repository : zfs
Summary : Kernel module(s) (dkms)
URL : https://github.com/openzfs/zfs
License : CDDL
Description : This package contains the dkms ZFS kernel modules.
Vendor : <NULL>
Available packages
Name : zfs-dkms
Epoch : 0
Version : 2.3.2
Release : 1.fc41
Architecture : noarch
Download size : 31.0 MiB
Installed size : 58.6 MiB
Source : zfs-dkms-2.3.2-1.fc41.src.rpm
Repository : zfs
Summary : Kernel module(s) (dkms)
URL : https://github.com/openzfs/zfs
License : CDDL
Description : This package contains the dkms ZFS kernel modules.
Vendor
Let’s try to remove it normally:
root@benjo:/etc/yum.repos.d# dnf remove zfs-dkms
Package Arch Version Repository Size
Removing:
zfs-dkms noarch 2.2.0-1.fc38 zfs 56.9 MiB
Transaction Summary:
Removing: 1 package
After this operation, 57 MiB will be freed (install 0 B, remove 57 MiB).
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Running transaction
[1/2] Prepare transaction 100% | 0.0 B/s | 1.0 B | 00m01s
>>> Running pre-uninstall scriptlet: zfs-dkms-0:2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch
>>> Error in pre-uninstall scriptlet: zfs-dkms-0:2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch
>>> Scriptlet output:
>>>
>>> Error! The module/version combo: zfs/2.2.0 is not located in the DKMS tree.
>>>
>>> [RPM] %preun(zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 3
Transaction failed: Rpm transaction failed.
It didn’t work. Some folks online suggested to pass --force option dnf, however the DNF on Fedora 41 no longer has that flag.
root@benjo:/etc/yum.repos.d# dnf remove --force zfs-dkms
Unknown argument "--force" for command "remove". Add "--help" for more information about the arguments.
Fortunately, I found the solution from [1], suggesting to use the --noscripts option when calling erase (-e or --erase) with the rpm command. So I tried that.
root@benjo:~# rpm --erase --noscripts zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch
No messages, which generally means good news in Linux. Let’s confirm that the package zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch is gone.
root@benjo:~# rpm -ql zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch
package zfs-dkms-2.2.0-1.fc38.noarch is not installed
That’s it. This is the first time I encountered this corrupted RPM package problem.
Reference: