kernel-2.4.20-37.9.legacy.src.rpm problem

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 02:48:16AM -0500, Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. wrote:

> I just installed kernel-2.4.20-37.9.legacy.src.rpm.
> 
> I wondered why this was not called kernel-source-2.4.20-37.9.legacy.rpm  
> like it's predecessors, but I installed it anyway.
> Now rpm does not know it was installed.

[snip output]

> Was the package incorrectly named?  Is that what is causing the problem?
> Why doesn't rpm know what package the file belongs to?

You have installed a source RPM, which, contrary to your expectation is
not the same as the kernel-source RPM which is effectively a binary RPM
(in that binary RPMs are registered in the RPM database).

Source RPMs are not registered in the rpm database; they consist of
original source files, patches and spec files required to rebuild RPMs.
However, the kernel-source RPM which is available as usual at
http://download.fedoralegacy.org/redhat/9/updates/i386/kernel-source-2.4.20-37.9.legacy.i386.rpm
can be installed to allow building of extra kernel modules against that
kernel version.

I hope that clarifies things. The kernel is a special case - the
kernel-source package would perhaps be better named the kernel-dev
package, in the same way that many library packages have -dev
equivalents with header files.

Cheers,

Dominic.