[Techtalk] rpm --allfiles

[Mandi]

On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Hamster wrote:

> Hi,
>
> While reading through the rpm man page, I came across the following entry under the "Install and Upgrade" section.
>
> --allfiles
> 	Installs or upgrades all the missingok files in the package.
>
> My question is what is a "missingok" file?
>
> Is it a typo in the man page, or an entity in its own right?

it's an entity in its own right.  From mandrake's advanced RPM HOWTO at
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/howtos/mdk-rpm/advanced.html

missingok files are present at the beginning of the rpm process (it seems
like they may or may not be in the package) but aren't installed.

missingok files are the opposite of ghost files, which appear after the
rpm building process has started - they are most often present after
installation.  I think a practical application of ghost may be files that
are "touch"ed during the rpm installation - the database would still need
to know that such files should be removed in the event that the rpm is
uninstalled.

Neither ghost nor missingok are used very often.


HTH
--mandi