problem with rpm: rename/unlink failed: is a directory

[Jakub Bogusz]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 01:05:49PM +0200, Michal Moskal wrote:
> [malekith at roke RPMS]$ sudo rpm -Uvh yelp-2.1.0-2.i586.rpm
> Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
>    1:yelp                   ########################################### [100%]
> error: unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/X11R6/bin/yelp: cpio: rename failed - Is a directory[malekith at roke RPMS]$ ls -l /usr/X11R6/bin/yelp*         
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        90472 Oct 18 12:48 /usr/X11R6/bin/yelp;3dafe6f2
[...]
> The solution would be to (in shell terms) do rm -r <file> before rename,
> not just rm <file> as rpm does.
> 
> However I'm not sure if that's so good idea. The problem occurs mainly
> with some random junk left in filesystem by installation/reinstallation
> or manual installation. However there can be also a problem if package
> qux places its files in directory /foo/bar, that is symlink to say
> /foo/bar-1.1 in foo package, and qux doesn't require qux. Now when
> we install foo, when qux is already installed files from qux will go to
> /dev/null.

IMO bad idea - directory may contain files from other packages not only
because of missing dependencies, but also when some directory is changed
to other directory with compatibility symlink left (remember automake
1.6 before no_versioned_dir patch?)...


-- 
Jakub Bogusz