Can't uninstall multiple instances of a package

Émeric Maschino emeric.maschino at jouy.inra.fr
Mon Jun 12 20:25:15 UTC 2006


Hi,

Having some spare time, I decided to try how Quake2 performs with a Matrox G400
graphics adapter. To this end, I downloaded and installed
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com:/idstuff/quake2/unix/quake2-3.20-glibc-6.i386.rpm. It
was complaining about a missing libglide2x.so, but I forced the installation
anyway with rpm -ivh --force. Once installed, I can't run the game (don't
remember why), so I decided to uninstall it with rpm -e quake2. No error
message and everything appears to be OK. Googling a little, I found a Quake2
RPM package targeted for FC5 (very close to Rawhide) at
http://www.chez.com/colinf/rpms/quake2/quake2-r0.16.1-io1.i386.rpm. Let's try
this version. Unfortunately, it can't be installed because of conflicts with
some files of the quake2-3.20-glibc-6 package. Strange, I thought it was
installed previously! Interestingly, rpm -q quake2 answers quake2-3.20-glibc-6.
Maybe an error during the installation process? OK for a reinstallation of this
package with the hope that the uninstall script will properly uninstall it this
time. Since rpm -q quake2 reported it was already installed, I ran rpm -Uvh
quake2-3.20-glibc-6.i386.rpm. No error at all, and no complain about this
package was already installed. And now, rpm -e complains about multiple
instances of this package. In fact, rpm -q quake2 now gives two identical lines
with quake2-3.20-glibc-6! rpm -e --allmatches quake2 didn't help. Rebuilding the
database with rpm --rebuilddb didn't help. yum remove quake2 seems to perform as
expected, i.e. as if the package was correctly erased. But a subsequent rpm -q
quake2 reveals that there are still two instances of this package! And I have
the strong feeling that if I once again update this package with rpm -Uvh, I'll
get three instances of quake2-3.20-glibc-6.

Is there anybody out there understanding what's going wrong with rpm/yum? When
hobby turns into system administration headache ;-)

Many thanks,

   Émeric




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