[techtalk] Re: rpms r bad?

Conor Daly conor.daly at oceanfree.net
Sat May 26 10:24:40 EST 2001


On Fri, May 25, 2001 at 05:31:00PM -0400 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Martin.Caitlyn at epamail.epa.gov thought:
> I understand some of the problems that can lead to "RPM hell", mainly
> because Red Hat has changed the rpm database structure over time.  Also, it
> is entirely possible to get effectively conflicting dependency problems,
> which force you to use the --nodeps or --force options, in which case you
> really do have to understand the consequences of what you are doing, which
> most newbies don't.  I can probably list a bunch of other issues I have run
> into, but for the most part rpm works very well and makes keeping track of
> what version you are running and what packages you have pretty easy.

The thing that gets me with rpm is the way I cannot query an uninstalled
package to see what's there.  For example, I wanted to install xanim the
other day.  Gnome's gmc has associations made for .avi to xanim but it
ain't there on my system.  So I go looking.  I mount the rh7.0 CD, cd to
the RPMS directory, scan through an ls looking for likely packages, find
one that looks likesy and isn't installed, do an rpm -ql
package-0.1.3.9-i386.rpm and I get back "pagkage is not installed"  I KNOW
it's not installed, that's why I'm trying to look inside for the proggie I
need.  If I could do that, I could do an rpm -ql * | grep xanim and figure
out which rpm I need to start with!

ARRGHH!

Conor (Who tried to view the .avi in Windoze on vmware and got 10% of the
audio!)
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
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