File /usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py line 86

[joseph]

Just got this error on my CentOS box:

[root@bj219 lib]# yum update
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
    yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 86, in main
    base.doLock(YUM_PID_FILE)
  File "__init__.py", line 497, in doLock
  File "__init__.py", line 540, in _lock
OSError: [Errno 28] No space left on devic

It's a disk space issue on /var, you need to release some space so that yum can work again!

An alternative solution is to redefine cachedir in /etc/yum.conf:

[root@bj219 lib]# vi /etc/yum.conf 

[main]
cachedir=/home/yum
...

[joseph]

When you're trying to update CentOS-4.1 to CentOS-4.8, it takes about 1.2GB disk space depending on the softwares you installed.