rhpl update problem and rpmdb problem(s) (was Re: What is the current F14 state?)

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2010-10-04 at 16:26 -0600, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 02:51:04PM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-10-04 at 11:18 -0600, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> > > 
> > > Running 'package-cleanup --cleandupes' would likely help.  After
> > 
> > I'd highly recommend being very cautious about that, because what this
> > seems to do is actually remove the package. That is, if you have
> > foobar-1.1 installed and foobar-1.0 as a 'ghost' in the RPM database,
> > after doing package-cleanup --cleandupes , you will have no 'foobar'
> > package installed at all.
> 
> Eh?  On all occasions I was using that (a number of times after
> botched updates for one reason or another) it was always removing
> specifically foobar-1.0 and not foobar-1.1.  One caveat though.
> If some dependencies for foobar-1.1 would be missing it _may_ grab
> foobar-1.1 due to removal of dependencies.  It asks for a
> confirmation if you are not running '-y' and it is indeed a good
> idea to pay attention. 'yum-complete-transaction' is likely the best
> when it can be applied but it may get confused as well.
> 
> > I comprehensively screwed over a system by
> > using --cleandupes once.
> 
> Maybe something was buggy or maybe you did have dependency problems?
> No way to tell now.

Yeah, unfortunately. I did say it may just have been something anomalous
in my case.

> > 
> > What's better to do in the case of having a 'ghost' package in the
> > database - it's not really 'installed' in the sense of the files being
> > there on the disk, but it's in the database - is 'rpm -e --justdb
> > --noscripts' .
> 
> If there are still files which belong to foobar-1.0 and not foobar-1.1
> (/usr/share/doc/foobar-1.0/ is the most obvious example but this is
> not the only possibility) then they will be left on your system and
> now not claimed by any package.  Cleaning that up "by hand" is a long

Indeed. That's why I said this is better *in the case of a 'ghost'
package*, where the files have actually gone but the package entry
remains in the DB.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
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