Re: removing a single rpm when there are 2

[Panu Matilainen <pmatilai laiskiainen org>]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, seth vidal wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 18:51 -0300, Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 03:15:11PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> > > seth vidal wrote:
> > > > Ian Brown wrote:
> > > > > there are two  mesa-libGLU installed here , one is i386 and one is x86_64.
> > > > > How do I erase the x86_64 version?
> > > >
> > > > rpm -e mesa-libGLU.x86_64
> > >
> > > Note that files shared between the two versions will also be removed
> > > leaving the i386 version only partially remaining.  It would probably
> > > be required to reinstall the i386 version in order to return it to
> > > complete status.  Probably better to remove both and then install the
> > > i386 version only if that is your desired ending state.
> >
> > Are you sure about that ? As far as I remember, shared files between
> > packages would only be removed when the last owner was.
>
> it's a bug in rpm that causes it. I think the bug has been fixed for
> rawhide/fedora 8, I _think_.

Yes. Except it'd be better described as a "bug" because it was a known 
side-effect of an ages old nasty hack to bring memory usage down...
Further, that only affected files in certain directories such as 
documentation and locales.

Note that rpm also allows multilib packages to "share" conflicting (same 
path, different contents) executables, in such a case the binary 
of the "better" arch wins and the other never gets put to the disk. Which 
is fine until you remove the "better" arch package, in which case the file 
goes missing although the other package claims owning such a file.

All that said, mesa-libGLU package isn't affected by either issue.

	- Panu -