Multilib packages and common identical files issue

[Matthias Saou]

Hi,

I've searched through bugzilla, and haven't found any entry about this
problem, although it would be pretty amazing if no one had yet filed a
bug for it...

Quick "how to reproduce" (on x86_64) :

# yum install zlib
[...]
Installed: zlib.i386 0:1.2.3-3
Dependency Installed: glibc.i686 0:2.4.90-35
Complete!
[root at python3 ~]# rpm -e zlib.i386
[root at python3 ~]# rpm -V zlib
missing     /usr/share/doc/zlib-1.2.3
missing   d /usr/share/doc/zlib-1.2.3/README
# 

This is quite a problem, since after a default x86_64 FC6t3 install,
I've done "yum remove glibc.i686" to get rid of all legacy x86 packages
on my system, and now "rpm -Va" reports missing man pages,
documentation files and translations for many, many packages.

This might be the cause of some issues I've been seeing after a reboot
today, with GNOME getting stuck, an error message about a file related
to the workspace switcher...

I've been removing (--justdb) all packages with missing files, then
reinstalling them, but this is messing some configuration files around
and will possibly cause more harm since many pre/post scriplets aren't
meant to run in these conditions.

Am I right to believe that this is a bug in rpm, where it should be
keeping these "common" files upon erasing one of the two multilib
packages (and ideally timestamping them with the correct timestamps
from the remaining package)?

Matthias

-- 
Clean custom Red Hat Linux rpm packages : http://freshrpms.net/
Fedora Core release 5.92 (FC6 Test3) - Linux kernel 2.6.18-1.2693.fc6
Load : 0.01 0.08 0.31