RPM artifacts related to ghost files

[Panu Matilainen]

On 06/05/2013 04:41 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> I looked at some file list inconsistencies in a custom tool and
> discovered several odd things related to ghost files.
>
> A few packages contain hard-linked files where some of the names have
> the ghost flag set, but others haven't.  Probably the most prominent
> example is binutils-2.23.51.0.1-6.fc18.x86_64:
>
> -rwxr-xr-x (g) 7 root root 2908152 /usr/bin/ld
> -rwxr-xr-x () 7 root root 2908152 /usr/bin/ld.gold
>
> (The --qf output format is '[%{filemodes:perms} (%{fileflags:fflags})
> %{fileinodes} %{fileusername} %{filegroupname} %{filesizes}
> %{filenames}\n]'.)
>
> Symlinks with ghost status are fairly common.  Here's an example from
> util-linux-2.22.2-6.fc18.x86_64.rpm:
>
> lrwxrwxrwx (cmng) 1 root root 12 /etc/mtab
>
> (I'm attaching the full list for Fedora/18/i686.)
>
> The next thing is very odd.  xulrunner-devel-21.0-4.fc18.x86_64 contains
> ghost files which are present in the CPIO archive:
>
> -rw-r--r-- (g) 3055 root root 490 /usr/lib64/xulrunner/js-gdb.pyc
> -rw-r--r-- (g) 3055 root root 490 /usr/lib64/xulrunner/js-gdb.pyo
>
> rpm2cpio | cpio -tv shows this:
>
> -rw-r--r--   2 root     root            0 May 21 15:32
> ./usr/lib64/xulrunner/js-gdb.pyc
> -rw-r--r--   2 root     root          490 May 21 15:32
> ./usr/lib64/xulrunner/js-gdb.pyo
>
> (Both files have the same inode number, so they are hard linked to each
> other.)

This looks like a result of a simple refactoring mistake:

         if (S_ISREG(fsm->sb.st_mode) && fsm->sb.st_nlink > 1)
             fsm->postpone = saveHardLink(fsm, NULL);

         if (fsm->postpone || fsm->fflags & RPMFILE_GHOST) /* XXX Don't 
if %ghost file. */
             continue;

These checks should (and used to) be the other way around, but at some 
point in recent FSM refactoring efforts they've gotten flipped around. 
Probably covers the other strange findings with hardlinked %ghost files too.

Thanks for noticing and reporting!

	- Panu -