Accidentally deleted a module needed by yum

I have a problem when trying to update yum. It gives me an error:

After running yum update

There was a problem importing one of the Python modules
required to run yum. The error leading to this problem was:

   No module named base64

Please install a package which provides this module, or
verify that the module is installed correctly.

It's possible that the above module doesn't match the
current version of Python, which is:
2.6.6 (r266:84292, Oct 12 2012, 14:36:13)
[GCC 4.4.6 20120305 (Red Hat 4.4.6-4)]

If you cannot solve this problem yourself, please go to
the yum faq at:
  http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/Faq

I may have accidentally deleted the base64 module when I was trying to remove another module.

Is there a way to reinstall the base64 module?
Is there a way to reinstall python2.6 for Red Hat?

Note that the base64 module is missing, and hence yum doesn't work.

(Suggestion from Nikolay) Tried installing the RPM packages: python-devel-2.6.6-36.el6.i686.rpm
python-libs-2.6.6-36.el6.i686.rpm

rpm -ivh --force *
warning: python-devel-2.6.6-36.el6.i686.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID c105b9de: NOKEY
warning: python-libs-2.6.6-36.el6.i686.rpm: Header V4 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 192a7d7d: NOKEY
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:python-libs            ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:python-devel      

 ########################################### [100%]

python:

import urllib2
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 92, in <module>
    import base64
ImportError: No module named base64

Still showing base64, a python module missing.

Darthyogurt

Posted 2013-12-01T19:48:37.243

Reputation: 13

This answer explains how to install Python in Linux without yum. – VL-80 – 2013-12-01T20:35:11.647

Nikolay Thanks I've tried that; however that doesn't replace the existing Python 2.6 which Yum is dependent on. I'm trying to fix that. – Darthyogurt – 2013-12-01T20:41:44.483

Ok. Did you see this ?

– VL-80 – 2013-12-01T20:50:29.500

Hi Nikolay, Getting this:root@jaws# /usr/bin/python -V Python 2.6.6 root@jaws# rpm -qf /usr/bin/python python-2.6.6-36.el6.i686 Which I believe means same version, so it's not a python mismatch? – Darthyogurt – 2013-12-01T20:53:29.360

probably it is not. But anyway, that guy had a very similar problem and he resolved that in this post. I would try it, because it does make sense what he did.

– VL-80 – 2013-12-01T20:58:44.580

@ Nikolay... you were right! it fixed it. All I had to do was install python-2.6.6-36.el6.i686.rpm, did "rpm -i --forced python-2.6.6-36.el6.i686.rpm". my module is back up and running, Yum works and python is working! Please supply as an answer so I can check answered. – Darthyogurt – 2013-12-01T23:18:16.123

Accidentally deleted a module needed by yum - how to reinstall it?

Answers