cross-compiling rpm -- runtime issues

[Eli Carter <eli carter inet com>]

All,

I have built rpm 4.1 for arm-linux, to run on arm-linux.  But it doesn't 
work. :(  What am I doing wrong?

Oh, you want more detail? ;)

So far, I have rpm 4.1 built to run on x86, but create packages for armv4l.
Using that, I built rpm 4.1 to run on armv4l and use packages for armv4l.

I can then use the x86->armv4l rpm 4.1 to convert all my rpms to cpios, 
transfer them to the target, create a directory, cpio --extract all of 
those, then chroot into that directory.

In that chroot, I am now able to do an
rpm --initdb
and
rpm -qa
(which shows no output, as expected).

But, problem #1:
rpm --install complains that the packages are "intended for a armv4l 
architecture"
And
# rpm --eval='%{_arch}'
i386
I was expecting it to give 'armv4l' or similar instead.  Ok, so I use 
--ignorearch to get around that for now, and rpm will install the 
packages successfully.  The files are installed as expected.

But, problem #2:
# rpm -qa
Still shows nothing.
So,
# rm -f /var/lib/rpm/*
# rpm --initdb
# echo $?
0
# ls /var/lib/rpm
Packages  __db.001  __db.002  __db.003
# rpm --install --nodeps --ignorearch gzip*.rpm
# ls /var/lib/rpm
Basenames  Group       Packages        Requirename     Sigmd5       __db.002
Dirnames   Installtid  Providename     Requireversion  Triggername  __db.003
Filemd5s   Name        Provideversion  Sha1header      __db.001
# rpm -qa
Shows nothing, but /var/lib/rpm/Packages has been updated and shows some 
indication that gzip was added.[1]
# rpm -qa -vv
D: opening  db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages joinenv
D: opening  db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages rdonly mode=0x0
D: locked   db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages
D: closed   db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages
D: closed   db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages

I'm using glibc 2.3.1, a 2.5 kernel in case that matters.

An strace of 'rpm -qa -vv' gives a few hundred lines of output, but I 
noticed that it seems to do a lot of:

fcntl64(3, F_SETLKW64, {type=F_WRLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=8020, 
len=1}, 0xbeffe81c) = 0
getpid()                                = 28530
fcntl64(3, F_SETLK64, {type=F_UNLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=8020, 
len=1}, 0xbeffe81c) = 0

Where fd 3 is:
open("/var/lib/rpm/__db.001", O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
Probably irrellavent, but it looked odd to me.

I'd appreciate any hints as to what I should look into here.....

TIA,

Eli

[1] I used python and did (basically) this:
for d in open('Packages').read().split('\0'):
 if len(d):
  print repr(d)
to get a basic idea of the file's contents.
--------------------. "If it ain't broke now,
Eli Carter           \                  it will be soon." -- crypto-gram
eli.carter(a)inet.com `-------------------------------------------------




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