how to deal with duplicate rpms

[Jim Cornette]

Pybe wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 16:14:15 -0400 (EDT), Richard Horvitz
> <rhorvitz at ececs.uc.edu> wrote:
> 
>>When I do an "apt-get update" it tells me that I have some duplicate rpms,
>>e.g. qt-devel
>>rpm -q qt-devel
>>qt-devel-3.3.3-0.1
>>qt-devel-3.3.2-2
>>
>>and there are a few more.  Is there a safe way to clean these up?
>>Thanks for any information!

I had this happen in mass proportions on one of my test machines. I 
located the older version and deleted just the database portion using 
rpm. the second package being newer most likely overwrote the earlier 
rpm of the same type for files of the same name.

rpm -e qt-devel-3.3.3-0.1 --justdb
should erase the duplicate, which is probably just the db entry in the 
database for rpm.

After removing the database only as described above, verify the newer 
version is complete with the command below. If it is not complete, you 
might need to download the latest rpms and replacefiles and replacepkgs.

rpm -q --verify qt-devel-3.3.2-2
should come back with no result, otherwise, your latest version rpm is 
not intact.

to correct this problem, you need to run the below command, after 
downloading the rpms into a local directory. This will replace all files 
and the package entries from the older incomplete rpm.

rpm qt-devel-3.3.2-2*.rpm --replacefiles --replacekgs


I hope this helps! Also this discussion took place on the development 
list and there is a script that was effective in locating all the 
duplicate rpms and I could easily delete only the db from the earlier 
versions and all was well. The subject has MA Young in the title. I 
found the script when using a search off of redhat.com's main site page.

Jim

-- 
"If I have trouble installing Linux, something is wrong. Very wrong."

	- Linus Torvalds