Re: How to handle erasing an RPM that contains a mandatory file

[bob proulx com (Bob Proulx)]

Fulko Hew sita aero wrote:
> I would, but the std tarballs such as (in the case of bash), from
> FSF.org don't come with spec files.  Do you suggest that I hunt
> down Redhat's version of a source?

Not necessarily Red Hat.  There are many distros that use rpm.  And
there are many legacy Unix systems that local admins are using rpm as
an add-on to manage packages.  I would be happy to share with you my
own very generic spec file that I use on legacy Unix systems but it is
too big to post to the mailing list.

> > I think needing to do that is incorrect.  I would fix it so that they
> > will not be needing to erase bash "for other technical reasons".  It
> > will be a source of problems.
> 
> Perhaps, but the person who built our package manager manager
> chose to rpm -e followed by rpm -i, whenever a package is upgraded.

Ugly.

> This is probably due to the reason that during the install process
> (because its actually install and not upgrade), we have to be able
> to 'install' older versions of an RPM incase the 'new' rpm failed
> because and embedded application failed within the new rpm,
> or because the customer decided that they wanted to fall-back
> to an older version of the same rpm

I expected you to say because of the ordering of script execution in
the %post and other scripts.  If the %post is broken then that is the
only method of dealing with the problem from a user perspective.
(Let's not talk about triggers because that would be a developer
perspective not a user perspective.)

I would still go with the --upgrade and the --oldpackage options.
Otherwise nothing will ever be able to depend upon bash.

> See above... I think rpm -e is my only approach.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

If the -e were accompanied by --nodeps then the erase would proceed
even if things depended upon bash.  But if bash provides /bin/sh then
rpm install itself will probably be broken.  Because you have not run
into this I infer that you are running on a legacy Unix system where
bash is simply an addition shell.

Bob