Re: [Fwd: Re: [LIH] rpm woes]

[Sanjeev Gupta <ghane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Mithun Bhattacharya wrote:

> Why would installing RPM be so tough ? - answer is they changed the RPM
> database. You not only need to get a RPM which can read the old database
> and yet be able to handle 4.0 format but it should also migrate the
> database from the old format because the software available can read
> from the old format but definitely not going to write to it.

<flame>

What???  You mean a Distribution decided to change the way it distributes
packages?  And this is not transparent to users?

I had read about rpm[the manager] issues, but didnt realize till I read
your mail how non-trivial it would be.  I appreciate the detail you have
given, what I cant understand is tha RH made it so error-attractive[1].

> No need to compile RPM - just download the following rpm (got this from
> rpmfind - didnt do any black magic!!)
> 
> rpm -Uvh
> ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm.org/rpm/test-4.0.1/rpm-4.0.1-0.29.6x.i386.rpm
> 
> Please note you can upgrade using any rpm which has th 6x in it - you
> cant use anything which has 7x (that is for RedHat 7.0 or above).

Let me get this straight.  rpm4 is NOT backward compatible?  Surely you
jest.  Someone is, because the joke seems to be on the users.

> Mind you it will fail some dependencies which you have to download
> separately like db3 maybe bzip etc etc.. Just search for them on
> rpmfind.net and download approrpiately. Just remember don't touch
> anything which has a 7x till you have upgraded.

My only experience with RH administration was a remote server, last year.
After spending a week trying to figure out why rpm would report
dependancies, but not install them, I terminated the server and shifted to
a Debian.  Cost me USD100 extra, I think it was worth it.

> WARNING: After you download and upgrade rpm (upgrade rpm separately !!)
> run 
> rpm --rebuilddb 
> this will migrate the database from RPM 3.x format to RPM 4.x format.

Thank God for small mercies.

<rant intensity=72> Does this remind anyone of Products from another
company? </rant>

> Not doing this will zap your RPM database and you definitely don't want
> to do that do you unless you never ever want to install any RPM ever
> after that.

Great.  So now what happens to all the RH-based distributions?  Mandrake?

I remember Raju at a meet (Newgen) installing LDAP, he did, IIRC,
	cd /cdrom/rpms_directory
	rpm -ivh *ldap*
which probably installed the LDAP-AIX-tools package, and the
PAM-without-ldap-2.4.i386.rpm package, too ;-)

This scares me.

</flame>

Still, Mithun, your reply was precise and extremely illimunating.  Add to
ILUG-D FAQ, webmaster?

--
Sanjeev "ghane" Gupta                    Mob: +65 98551208
dotXtra Pte Ltd                          Fax: +65 2275776
Singapore                                email: ghane@xxxxxxxxxxx
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