Strange package dependency problem

[Iain Rae]

seth vidal wrote:

>>>so you're controlling your own tree and things are still broken? This
>>>sounds like $user-error to me.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Things will break for various reasons , including user-error. The user 
>>error ones tend to get noticed very quickly since they tend to effect 
>>large numbers of machines. Not all the hosts are running the same rpm 
>>sets so you get the occasional unforseen conflict, some people will 
>>leave huge amounts of crap in /tmp  or /var/tmp so some updates will 
>>fail. some machines are switched off for a couple of weeks then switched 
>>on again, some combinations of postinstall scripts don't work well at 
>>install time but are fine if you update/install the rpms on an installed 
>>machine...
>>
>>    
>>
>
>but that's just it. Yum tries to resolve deps based on what it has
>available.
>

We're not running yum, we're using an in house tool since we couldn't 
find anything that would meet all our requirements[0], for some 
combinations of host/rpm we want to specify rpm versions tighter than 
"what's available"

>
>so what you've told me is:
>
>1. you control your repository tree
>2. you control the update runs on your system
>3. you know that there are unresolved deps in your tree
>

In  the tree, no I don't "know" that. There could be no unresolved deps 
in the tree but at the same time there may be dependancy problems with a 
host running one of about 100 rpms sets that aren't our standard set, we 
could write something to check this but the pain level hasn't hit high 
enough to warrant it - yet. though that seems to be on the cards for 
this summer.

>4. you're CHOOSING to run a global update, knowing that things are not
>right.
>  
>

No, we're running a global update having done a reasonable set of 
checks, we expect the system to let us know about failed rpms, 
dependancy errors or not.

>
>So how is this not an unreasonable user-error?
>

I didn't say it wasn't an unreasonable error, merely pointed out that 
unresolved dependancies were not the only problems you'll run into if 
you're running automated updates,  hence monitor/report the status of 
your updates.

[0]There wasn't the last time we looked, this is an ever changing world, 
the usual disclaimers apply.