tip: automated way to delete duplicate rpms

[Jim Cornette]

oldman wrote:
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> Kim Lux wrote:
>> I recently updated a server from fc3 to fc6.  All seemed to go well
>> except the first yum attempt to update the machine failed and when I
>> entered synaptic I received a ton of errors about duplicate rpms
>> installed on the machine.  I've run into this issue before.
>> Unfortunately neither yum nor synaptic has a way to deal with it, as far
>> as I can tell.   
>>
>> Rather than manually go through the list of offending rpms and delete
>> them, I did things semi automatically.  There were 120 duplicate rpms on
>> my machine, so manually typing the full package names would have taken a
>> while.
>>
>> Here is what I did instead.
>>
>> 1) Generate a list of all the rpm packages installed.
>>
>> $rpm -qa --queryformat '%{name}\n' > pkglist
>>
>> This generates an unsorted list that looks like this.
>> libavc1394
>> libmusicbrainz
>> ethtool
>> desktop-file-utils
>> less
>> time
>> libXrandr
>> rmt
>>
>> 2) Sort the list and find the duplicates
>>
>> $sort -g pkglist | uniq -d > duplicates
>>
>> This list will look like 
>>
>> a2ps
>> anacron
>> at
>> audit
>> ...
>>
>> 3) Generate a list of the packages with versions to look at and edit
>>
>> I created a small script file called dupWithVersions with this in it
>>
>> for pkg in `cat duplicates`; do
>>   rpm -q $pkg
>> done
>>
>> Redirect the output to another file like this.  $dupWithVersions
>>> removeList
>> The remove list will look like this:
>>
>> a2ps-4.13b-57
>> a2ps-4.13b-57.fc6.3
>> anacron-2.3-41.fc6
>> anacron-2.3-44.fc6
>> at-3.1.8-82.fc6
>> at-3.1.8-84.fc6
>> audit-1.2.8-1.fc6
>> audit-1.3-2.fc6
>>
>> Go through the remove list and manually remove the versions you want to
>> KEEP !  Remember this is a list of rpms you want to remove !
>>
>> 4) Remove the rpms in the remove list.
>>
>> To do this I generated a little script as follows:
>>
>> for pkg in `cat removelist`; do
>>   rpm -e $pkg
>> done
>>
>> This process quickly and correctly removed the duplicate rpms from my
>> machine. 
>>
>> I hope this helps someone. 
>>
> 	This worries me a little bit.  If you remove a package aren't you
> likely to remove identically named files from the newer package as well?
> 
> 	I ask because I usually do a rpm -e --justdb <pkgname> as I once found
> myself without some services after deleting an old package.
> 
> Scott

The safest way to remove the older package remnants is to download the 
newer packages and run
'rpm -Uvh --replacepkgs --replacefiles packagename(s).arch.rpm'
because of the reasons that you pointed to. If the older package has 
files that are the same name as used in the newer package, erasure of 
the files is probable when you erase the older version of the rpm.

Running 'rpm -Uvh --justdb --nodeps packagename(s).arch.rpm' will safely 
only remove the database entry but will leave the documentation (has a 
version number) and any files that are not contained within the new 
package lingering on your system. But for most occasions that I seen, 
each version of an rpm usually has files placed in the same location and 
will differ only in date and other file characteristics. That is why 
when you do an 'rpm -qV packagename' on the older package you usually 
see a lot of output with file details being different and when checking 
the later version you get no output because all is well with the newer 
version rpm.

I think so anyway! :-)
Jim

-- 
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction
rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith