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

[Michal Moskal]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 04:50:41PM +0200, Jakub Bogusz wrote:
> 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?)...

Yes, you are right. But probably we can fix it to overwrite empty
directories?

-- 
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: PLD Linux ::::::: Wroclaw University, CS Dept :  {E-,w}-- {b++,e}>+++ h