Fedora 43 Atomics released with a bug that prevents updates when third-party RPM repositories are enabled

Hi.

We’ve been a few days enjoying Fedora 43 also the atomics’ users, and now with Plasma 6.5 Kinoite looks great. However, those users that had enabled third-party RPM repositories with subkeys, such as the google-chrome one that is enabled from the welcome page, are not able to update the system after upgrading to 43 (released, not beta). Other popular repositories affected are Tailscale’s.

See Fedora 43 Kinoite Beta failed to add subkeys for google-chrome · Issue #5494 · coreos/rpm-ostree · GitHub , of which an excerpt of the error is:

2 metadata, 0 content objects fetched; 788 B transferred in 1 seconds; 0 bytes content written
Inactive requests:
  kernel (already provided by kernel-6.17.0-0.rc5.42.fc43.x86_64)
Checking out tree 6a9f1c3... done
Enabled rpm-md repositories: fedora-cisco-openh264 updates-testing updates fedora copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:phracek:PyCharm rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver rpmfusion-nonfree-steam google-chrome updates-archive
Updating metadata for 'fedora-cisco-openh264'... done
Updating metadata for 'updates-testing'... done
Updating metadata for 'updates'... done
Updating metadata for 'fedora'... done
Updating metadata for 'copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:phracek:PyCharm'... done
Updating metadata for 'rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver'... done
Updating metadata for 'rpmfusion-nonfree-steam'... done
Updating metadata for 'google-chrome'... done
Updating metadata for 'updates-archive'... done
Importing rpm-md... done
rpm-md repo 'fedora-cisco-openh264'; generated: 2025-03-05T10:45:56Z solvables: 6
rpm-md repo 'updates-testing'; generated: 2025-09-17T01:38:11Z solvables: 6553
rpm-md repo 'updates'; generated: 2018-02-20T19:18:14Z solvables: 0
rpm-md repo 'fedora'; generated: 2025-09-16T07:50:12Z solvables: 77562
rpm-md repo 'copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:phracek:PyCharm'; generated: 2025-09-02T06:34:48Z solvables: 8
rpm-md repo 'rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver'; generated: 2025-09-14T09:08:04Z solvables: 17
rpm-md repo 'rpmfusion-nonfree-steam'; generated: 2025-08-13T21:39:54Z solvables: 1
rpm-md repo 'google-chrome'; generated: 2025-09-16T21:24:47Z solvables: 4
rpm-md repo 'updates-archive'; generated: 2025-08-14T03:18:18Z solvables: 0
Resolving dependencies... done
Will download: 20 packages (24.6 MB)
Downloading from 'updates-testing'... done
error: failed to add subkeys for /var/cache/rpm-ostree/repomd/google-chrome-43-x86_64/linux_signing_key.pub to rpmdb

As stated above this issue is persisting after the release date, meaning that the affected Kinoite 43 is no longer just the beta: is the released one.

The obvious workaround is to disable / remove those repositories, but this would eventually remove the orphaned packages from the system, leaving the users waiting for the relevant upgrade for libdnf –at least.

Now the point is the following: we’ve been discussing in the linked issue above whether or not this should have blocked the release of the atomics. Probably that was the wrong place and we’ve been told to bring the conversation here (to which I agree), and my point is the following: given that Fedora Kinoite is presented as the following, isn’t this bug serious enough to re-evaluate the release criteria of those atomic editions?

Surf the web, keep in touch with friends, manage files, enjoy music and video, and get productive at work without having to worry about breaking your system.

I understand all editions are released with a single blocking criteria and the whole ecosystem is growing big, and it’s complex, and we all appreciate the work. However, the above motto seems to offer the Kinoite edition to a cohort of users that may not understand the issue behind, know how to disable the repos, or even find the linked issue with the hint to disable the repos.

Should the atomics have their own release-blocking criteria?

4 Likes

Totally agree, let’s wait to see what the Fedora team has to say about this.

I’m pretty sure the idea of Fedora 2028 is that they eventually will be release-blocking when they are ready.

2 Likes

rpm-ostree-2025.12-1.fc43 is currently in the testing repository and will soon be released as stable. I can confirm that the new version has resolved BZ#2399786. I had issues earlier, but after the latest update, everything works as it should.

2 Likes

Thanks! I saw that submission on the bugzilla issue, as I commented there as well and I was getting CC’d on the updates.

I don’t want to speak for the Fedora Atomic SIG, but I think that the atomic variants are considered at the same level as the Fedora Spins in that they are not release-blocking in the same way that issues with editions would be. Glad to hear that it sounds like a fix is already in!

What’s the solution here if we’re unable to update to receive the fix?

I don’t believe I can rollback to before this was an issue. I’ve seen in other threads to rebase to Fedora 42, however rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/42/x86_64/silverblue produces the same error as in the first post in the thread, so I’m unable to continue the rebase.

If you don’t have Google Chrome layered - you could just disable the repo.

sudo sed -i ‘s/enabled=1/enabled=0/’ /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo

Thanks, I still ran into the same error after running

sudo sed -i "s/enabled=1/enabled=0/" /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo

(replacing curly single quotes)

confirming enabled=0 in the file, and rebooting, and trying to run rpm-ostree upgrade again.

Ultimately I was able to run upgrade by removing the file entirely

sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo

Which works for me since I don’t use chrome.

1 Like

I know that the following also helped me in addition to disabling the repository:

sudo rpm-ostree cleanup --repomd
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The rpm-ostree update with the fix as not landed in F42 yet: rpm-ostree-2025.12-1.fc42.

You can rpm-ostree override replace https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2025-48f7a97e20, reboot, and try again.

I have added some Karma - if we can get one more it can get pushed to Stable tonight.

Karma added.