FC4 up2date fatal RPM install error

[Jim Cornette]

David L wrote:

>> From: Jim Cornette <fc-cornette at insight.rr.com>
>> Reply-To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
>
> [snip]
>
>> David L wrote:
>>
>>> I just tried to run up2date on my FC4 system and got an error during 
>>> installation:
>>>
>>> There was a fatal RPM install error.  The message was:
>>> There was a rpm unpack error installing the package: 
>>> kde-i18n-Polish-3.5.0-0.1.fc4
>>>
>>> I selected the only available option - "OK" and it exited up2date 
>>> (it didn't just abort installing that one package).  So I tried to 
>>> run up2date again and it found one new package to download 
>>> (presumably one that was changed during the 2 hours I had been 
>>> running the previous up2date).  It installed that new package, but 
>>> didn't continue installing other downloaded packages where it left 
>>> off.  Now I suspect I have a half updated system.  Some of the 
>>> packages that were updated no longer work... for example thunderbird 
>>> no longer works.  How do I recover from this?
>>
> [snip]
>
>> If up2date exited before completing its duty, you will have quite a 
>> few errors with libraries being updated for programs that did not get 
>> updated and require the new library.
>>
>> I would change to your /var/spool/up2date directory and ensure that 
>> there is no kernel related rpms located in the directory. If there is 
>> some kernel related rpms, move them out of the way or run 'rpm -ivh 
>> kern*.rpm followed by rm kernel*.rpm.
>
> There are several kernel-related rpms:
> /var/spool/up2date/kernel-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4.i686.rpm        
> /var/spool/up2date/kernel-devel-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.i686.rpm
> /var/spool/up2date/kernel-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.i686.rpm        
> /var/spool/up2date/kernel-doc-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.noarch.rpm
> /var/spool/up2date/kernel-devel-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4.i686.rpm
>
>
>> After the install only packages are installed and moved out ot the 
>> way, run 'rpm --replacefiles --replacepkgs  *.rpm' from the 
>> /var/spool/up2date directory.
>
> What's an "install only package" and how do I install them?
>
>
> To figure out which of the rpms that I downloaded today were 
> successfully installed, I tried this and greped for "already 
> installed" in the output file:
>
> find . -name "*.rpm" -mtime -1 -exec rpm -ivh --test \{\} \; >& 
> /tmp/rpmout
>
> Then I moved all of the rpm files that claimed to be already installed 
> and then installed the rest like this:
>
> find . -name "*.rpm" -mtime -1 -exec rpm -ivh \{\} \;
>
> The same one that failed before failed with this message:
>
> rpm -ivh kde-i18n-Polish-3.5.0-0.1.fc4.noarch.rpm
> Preparing...                
> ########################################### [100%]
>   1:kde-i18n-Polish        ########################################### 
> [100%]
> error: unpacking of archive failed on file 
> /usr/share/doc/HTML/pl/common: cpio: rename failed - Is a directory
>
> But AFAICT, everything is working again.  But this seems to be a 
> pretty cumbersome process... shouldn't up2date just have a "continue" 
> button?!
>
> Thanks for the help...
>
>                     David

Good work getting through the rpm mess. It sounds like the Polish 
language file was  corrupted.  By trying to figure out the error message 
above, it looks like file /usr/share/doc/HTML/pl/common should be a 
file, however, it is a directory and rpm bails out.

Do you have a directory called file /usr/share/doc/HTML/pl/common/    ? 
If you do have a directory called that name, it might be from a problem 
another already installed prm for kde-il8n-Polish left behind.  Check 
Bugzilla for  related information.

The up2date program uses rpm I believe and does not recover from an 
error that rpm might encounter. I believe yum would have bombed out with 
similar troubles when rpm encountered  the error condition.

It looks like you are comfortable with more  Linux tui tools than I am. 
You might want to grab the source for up2date and check out what up2date 
is doing and suggest ways for improving the program. There is works on a 
replacement program for GUI updates for FC5 called pup. I believe 
up2date is pretty much finding its last days because of yum as the 
preferred update tool and pup designed to work with or in a similar way 
that yum does but with the GUI interface.

To reduce possible damage to your system in the future caused by poorly 
packaged programs or other problems, you might try updating fewer 
packages per transaction. When you do encounter a break in up2date, 
there is bound to be rpms that are not removed from your 
/var/spool/up2date directory. Yum on the other hand leaves the rpms on 
our system until yum clean all is performed or the periodic cleanup 
program for yum runs to clean out its /var/cache/yum/reponame/packages 
directories.

Jim