Vzkernel-firmware

When using CentOS 6 (RHEL6, Scientific Linux 6) distribution and OpenVZ RHEL6-based kernel, the following problem occurs while running yum update:

Transaction Check Error:
 file /lib/firmware/3com/3C359.bin from install of kernel-firmware-2.6.32-279.1.1.el6.centos.plus.noarch conflicts with file from package vzkernel-firmware-2.6.32-042stab056.11.noarch
 file /lib/firmware/3com/typhoon.bin from install of kernel-firmware-2.6.32-279.1.1.el6.centos.plus.noarch conflicts with file from package vzkernel-firmware-2.6.32-042stab056.11.noarch
 file /lib/firmware/acenic/tg1.bin from install of kernel-firmware-2.6.32-279.1.1.el6.centos.plus.noarch conflicts with file from package vzkernel-firmware-2.6.32-042stab056.11.noarch
 file /lib/firmware/acenic/tg2.bin from install of kernel-firmware-2.6.32-279.1.1.el6.centos.plus.noarch conflicts with file from package vzkernel-firmware-2.6.32-042stab056.11.noarch
 ....
 file /lib/firmware/yamaha/ds1e_ctrl.fw from install of kernel-firmware-2.6.32-279.1.1.el6.centos.plus.noarch conflicts with file from package vzkernel-firmware-2.6.32-042stab056.11.noarch
 file /lib/firmware/yamaha/yss225_registers.bin from install of kernel-firmware-2.6.32-279.1.1.el6.centos.plus.noarch conflicts with file from package vzkernel-firmware-2.6.32-042stab056.11.noarch

There could also be a different conflict between kernel-firmware and vzkernel-firmware packages.

Explanation

Package vzkernel-firmware is provided for distributions other than RHEL/CentOS 6, which lacks the package. On a CentOS 6, this package is not needed and it conflicts with the kernel-firmware package.

Solution

The solution is to remove vzkernel-firmware package:

# rpm -e vzkernel-firmware

and exclude it by adding the line marked in bold to openvz yum repo file /etc/yum.repos.d/openvz.repo:

[openvz-kernel-rhel6]
name=OpenVZ RHEL6-based kernel
#baseurl=http://download.openvz.org/kernel/branches/rhel6-2.6.32/current/
mirrorlist=http://download.openvz.org/kernel/mirrors-rhel6-2.6.32
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://download.openvz.org/RPM-GPG-Key-OpenVZ
exclude=vzkernel-firmware