Bug 1921620

Summary:	--force --allfiles have no effect
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	lejeczek <peljasz>
Component:	rpm	Assignee:	Packaging Maintenance Team <packaging-team-maint>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	swm-qe
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	CentOS Stream	CC:	bstinson, carl, jwboyer, pmatilai
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	8.0
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2021-02-02 14:13:05 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description lejeczek 2021-01-28 10:14:20 UTC

Description of problem:

-> $ rpm -iv --force --allfiles --nodeps --replacefiles centos-stream-repos-8-2.el8.noarch.rpm -vvv

Repos config files in /etc/yum.repos.d do not get replaced.
I do not know if that misbehaviour goes for every package but this one example certainly shows '--force' is ignored.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

RPM version 4.14.3

How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
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Actual results:


Expected results:


Additional info:

Comment 1 Panu Matilainen 2021-01-28 10:32:17 UTC

>       --force
>              Same as using --replacepkgs, --replacefiles, and --oldpackage.

These only apply to file conflict resolution and package installed status checks, and are not something people should be ever using really.

There's no way to override rpm %config file behavior at all, never was. Which is kinda strange actually.

Comment 2 Panu Matilainen 2021-02-02 14:13:05 UTC

So... this is not a bug, rpm is behaving as expected and documented, although I can see how the cli switches would be easy to mistake to do something else. 

While rpm *should* have a way to override the %config file behavior, this feature has been missing for 20+ years so it doesn't seem particularly critical and we have no plans to address this in RHEL 8 context, but it'll be considered in future rpm upstream development.

Comment 3 lejeczek 2021-02-03 09:28:34 UTC

Yes, but it's a big shame yes.
I'm ready to bet my breakfast - each one who will not find Panu's answer & explanation(or is rpmspec practitioner) will assume what I've assumed and while might not feel bothered to file a bugzilla one will get puzzled, especially after reading the following..:

 --force
              Same as using --replacepkgs, --replacefiles, and --oldpackage.
...
--replacefiles
              Install the packages even if they replace files from other, already installed, packages.
--replacepkgs
              Install the packages even if some of them are already installed on this system.

Thus if not really, truly a bug then I very much hope everybody will agree - man pages could use a very concrete & explicit update-correction in those sections.

regards, L.