OK This is a [SOLVE] on CentOS 7.9 but may crop in RHEL, RL, AL, et.al.
Recently I got the ERROR message, “ERROR: Invalid Version Flag: or” I had no idea how to solve it. In spite of my best efforts , NOTHING resolved it. It was time to get SERIOUS: WIPE OUT THE DRIVE AND DO A REINSTALL FROM BACKUP!!! GOOD plan, but I screwed up: I wiped out my backup!! WHOOPS!! Plan B.
Before I did ANYTHING I made a BACKUP of my existing DRIVE (That was how I managed to wipe out my CentOS 7.9 Backup). After I finished backing up my EXISTING DRIVE TWICE, I proceeded to do a reinstall of that existing backup, in hopes that that would solve the problem. It DID NOT!! I still got the same “ERROR: Invalid Version : Flag: or” message. Now for “Plan B”.
Since I wiped out my CentOS 7.9 backup, I dropped back to CentOS 7.8 Backup. Not great but it should work. Before I did ANYTHING I wiped the drive each time with GParted, this way there is a CLEAN drive to work with. This time I installed the CentOS 7.8 Backup. It ran smooth as as silk. I slept! With the Pussycat!! The PLAN was after the INSTALL was to simply run “Yum Update” thereby rolling over CenOS 7.8 => CentOS 7.9. The ONLY Catch was there were 918 Packages that needed to be updated!! It would take some 1 hour + to update the machine. I jumped back into bed with the Pussycat and went back to sleep!!
When I woke up the machine had a splash (?) screen covering but a wiggle of the mouse showed that indeed indeed it had updated, AND there was NO ERROR: Invalid Version: Flag: or message at the end.
Mark this Problem [SOLVED]!! Caveat: In order to get this to work you FIRST need to have a BACKUP!! That is the FIRST thing I am going to do is make a CURRENT BACKUP of CentOS 7.9 I also plan to do that for RL 8.6 as well.
Trivia: the “ERROR: Invalid Version: Flag: or:” Error message is restricted tp Red Hat spinoffs ONLY. Thus RHEL, CentOS, RL, AL, Fedora, et. al are ALL prone to receiving this message. I did not come accross a solution. I guess you can live with it, however having a solved solution is the ideal solution.
Mark this problem – with caveat – [SOLVED]
D’ Cat