Dnf got corrupted at some point

Ask Fedora
1

At some point over the past years, dnf stopped working for me. I don’t recall the details at this point; only that when I attempt to use dnf I see the following error.
$ dnf
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/dnf”, line 57, in
from dnf.cli import main
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/dnf/init.py”, line 30, in
import dnf.base
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/dnf/base.py”, line 29, in
import libdnf.transaction
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘libdnf’

My current release is Fedora 4.20.13-200.fc29.x86_64 and I’d like to upgrade to the fc33, but would like to update other stuff as well and will need a working dnf to do so. How can I restore dnf so that it works correctly?

2

You can try to install the package that is said to be missing.
Maybe yum still works?
yum whatprovides libdnf
yum install libdnf

3

It looks like yum uses the same libdnf package…

$ yum whatprovides libdnf
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/yum”, line 57, in
from dnf.cli import main
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/dnf/init.py”, line 30, in
import dnf.base
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/dnf/base.py”, line 29, in
import libdnf.transaction
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘libdnf’
[riwarren@rawlinux python3.9]$

4

First suggestion: Back up your files and do a clean install.

If that is not an option, download this and install it with rpm -i path-of-downloaded-file command:

If you need other dnf packages:

2 Likes
5

System packages never install into /usr/local, so the error with

/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/dnf/init.py

is concerning. Did you try to build or install DNF not as a package at some point, or did you install a different version of python via some method other than rpm?

2 Likes
6

I did install a version of python from python.org…
I’ve also been attempting to restore the dnf functionality over time, so it is possible I’ve made things worse.

7

You probably can switch back to your default python version.
It should still be installed.

Have a look here

or there:

You can use whereis python or locate to find your installation which should be under /usr/bin/python or exactly /usr/bin/python3.9.

You can use the alternatives command or modify .bashrc to point to the default installation - which should include a folder named libdnf.