Forcing yum to reinstall a package Revision as of Monday, 21 December 2015 at 02:30 UTC

When things are OK

 # Simply remove and install the package
 yum -y remove PACKAGE
 yum -y install PACKAGE

When things get bad

 # Use rpm to force removal and reinstall with yum
 rpm -e --nodeps PACKAGE
 yum -y install PACKAGE

When things go very South

 # Trick yum into thinking that the package
 # doesn't exist in the RPM database
 rpm -e --nodeps --justdb PACKAGE
 yum install PACKAGE

N.B. The last method doesn’t actually remove any files.

Other notes

Files staged for install when performing a yum update are kept in
/var/cache/yum/. This is useful in certain
situations.