Bug 13819

Summary: can't upgrade package with symlink in place of directory
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Philip Spencer <pspencer>
Component: rpmAssignee: Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.2   
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Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2001-01-09 15:42:12 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Philip Spencer 2000-07-12 19:39:27 UTC 
RPM (both versions 3.0.3 from Redhat 6.1 distribution and 3.0.4 from Redhat
6.2 distribution) will fail to upgrade a package if the new version has a
symlink where the old version had a directory.

Example:

Package foo version 1 has a directory /foo
Package foo version 2 puts its stuff in /bar, and has a symlink /foo ->
/bar for compatibility.

If foo-1.whatever.rpm is installed, "rpm -U foo-2.whatever.rpm" will fail.
With rpm 3.0.4 the error message is "unpacking of archive failed on file
/foo: cpio: unlink failed - Bad file descriptor". Version 3.0.3 gives a
slightly better message, "unpacking of archive failed on file /foo: cpio:
unlink failed - Is a directory".

rpm -e foo followed by rpm -U foo works correctly, but foo cannot be
upgraded from version 1 to version 2 by rpm unless you erase it completely
first.
Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2000-07-12 19:47:42 UTC 
No version of rpm has ever supported the ability to replace a directory with a
symlink. This
problem is starting to be addressed in rpm-4.0, but  ...

I'd suggest you consider some other way to package, because it's gonna be a
while before
rpm can/will support the ability to replace a directory with a symlink.
Comment 2 Jeff Johnson 2001-01-09 15:41:14 UTC 
*** Bug 23265 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Jeff Johnson 2001-01-09 16:26:27 UTC 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 3979 ***