do not taunt yum update

*sigh* i hate it when your connection dies in the middle of doing a yum update. especially since the update dies and you have no idea where it was at. then you log back in and try to continue the update, but the connection loss borked some updates so now you get “Transaction Check Error” messages for file conflicts between older packages and newer ones. what to do?
well, you can erase the old conflicting package via:
rpm -e --nodeps --allmatches <package name>
and install the new one with:
yum install <package name>
or if erasing a package sounds like a scary proposition — especially if it’s some major package whose lack of existence might completely bork your box — you can force the newer package to install by doing:
rpm -Uvh /var/cache/yum/<something>/packages/<rpm package> --force
(yum caches packages it downloads, so if it notices the conflict it should have already downloaded the headers and rpm files. which just might be in /var/cache/yum. or you can go download it by hand and put it where ever your heart pleases.)
once you’ve done either of these to get rid of whatever conflicts were showing before, you should be able to run yum update and let it go merrily on its way.