WARNING - rpm possibly broken in today's update

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Farkas Levente wrote:

> Stan Bubrouski wrote:
> > On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 13:31, nathan r. hruby wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Huh..
> >>
> >>I'm getting the same error with thte 2.6-test kernels.  Does "rpm -q
> >>foo" work as a normal user but not root?
> >>
> >>-n
> >
> >
> > export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.4
> >
> > should solve that issue.  It's a known bug somewhere in the interaction
> > between RPM and db4.
>
> the same happend with us after change to non fedora kernel. but what is
> the connection between rpm and db4 interaction AND kernel???

RPM uses db4.  db4 does a system call that is handled in kernel.
Kernel has restricted the semantics of that system call with
respect to handling O_DIRECT option to follow POSIX.  db4 has
assumed the non-standard semantics, so now with the restricted
standard semantics it crashes, so does RPM.

BTW, you could simply feel lucky Googlin' "rpm db4
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL" to get the answer from the masters:

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2003-11/1308.html


behdad