Re: What is this error?

[Panu Matilainen <pmatilai welho com>]

On Thu, 2003-06-05 at 00:22, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 11:36:36PM +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 22:50, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 04:38:33PM -0300, Scott Van Wart wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 16:27, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > Then upgrade to rpm-4.2-1 from
> > > > > 	ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/dist
> > > > > to prevent the stale locks being left behind.
> > > > 
> > > > Is 4.2 now safe for everyday use, or would you recommend sticking with
> > > > 4.1?
> > > 
> > > Depends on your definition of "safe".
> > > 
> > > The real issue is that linux is transiting from linuxthreads to NPTL,
> > > and rpm is along for the ride.
> > > 
> > > In dirt simple terms, that means rpm-4.2 (in Red Hat 9) behavior wrto
> > > database locking depends on what glibc is installed and what kernel is booted.
> > > 
> > > rpm-4.2 is released for Red Hat 9, that's a defacto definition of "production".
> > > 
> > > rpm-4.1.1 (same code base as rpm-4.2, doesn't need/use NPTL) is released
> > > for Red Hat 8, that, too, is a pretty good definition of "safe".
> > 
> > I've been wondering... I've got this i586 box running RH9 and noticed
> > that without NPTL rpm-4.2 doesn't much like concurrent access. Now
> 
> Yup, without NPTL rpm falls back to exclusive/shared fcntl lock.
> 
> > before I go hose the little firewall box for good: if I downgrade to
> > rpm-4.1.1 on RH9 does that actually give me back concurrent rpmdb access
> > on i586? From what I've undertood correctly the answer is yes, just
> > would like to be sure since the box is .. (well a long story, never mind
> > :)
> 
> The only path that makes sense to me is to get to NPTL if you want
> concurrent access. Any other deployment is not worth the effort,
> life's too short to mess around.

Making sense in long term is not what I'm asking for with a i586 box :)
The thing is I've little interest to buy i686 hardware to get NPTL just
to get concurrent access as long as the i586 does it's job.

a) Does rpm-4.1.1 support concurrent access to the extent that rpm-4.1
on RH 8.0 does, without NPTL support?
..or..
b) Is i586 capable of NPTL -> if I recompile glibc for i586 arch do I
magically get NPTL support on that too? I know plain old i386 can't
support NPTL but whether i586 can I dunno. (ok this isn't really rpm
turf so if you don't know .. well I dont blame you :)

P.S. To make perhaps a bit of sense to why I care about this at all:
I've got a script doing basically 'rpm -V <pgk1> <pkg2>...' to find
modified configuration files while apt holds the rpmdb lock and since
the script worked fine on my other box I was somewhat surprised it
didn't on the i586 box.

	- Panu -