Manually install RPM

[John Summerfield]

Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
> Devon Harding wrote:
>>
>>     Via a "rescue CD".  You'll need to boot the rescue CD, and install it
>>     from there.
>>
>>
>> No other way?  From tar.gz?
>>
> If you want your RPM database to be consistent, no, you must install
> from an RPM.  You'll need to erase the bad one first.  So long as you
> are going to replace it with an older version, you should be able to
> erase it with the --nodeps option, but you'll need a consistent
> environment (ie, the Rescue CD) to install it from.  And you'll have to
> know how to install RPMs from the rescue CD into your system via the
> --root option of rpm.  Once you have restored the bad package, you
> should be able to use your system again (assumes that you only broke one
> package).
> 
cd /
rpm2cpip <whatever> | cpio --extract -d <and some other options>

I'm assuming that you're installing the old rpm. This should get it 
about working.

Then you can do it properly with rpm. you will need to specify that 
you're installing an old package. and once that's done all should be well.

I recently used rpm2cpio this way to install a kernel rpm doesn't know 
about.