Bug 79077

Summary: rpm creates broken symlinks
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Juho Schultz <juho.schultz>
Component: rpmAssignee: Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.3   
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Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2002-12-05 13:18:34 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Juho Schultz 2002-12-05 13:18:27 UTC 
From Bugzilla Helper:
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Description of problem:
rpm -Uvh creates also broken symlinks when the package suggests so.
No warning or notice is given to the user.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
rpm-4.0.4

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Obtain a rpm that creates broken symlinks.
(e.g. nmap-frontend-3.00-1.i386.rpm from
download.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-frontend-3.00-1.i386.rpm)
2. rpm -Uvh nmap-frontend-3.00-1.i386.rpm

Actual Results:  The following files are created:
/usr/bin/nmapfe
/usr/bin/xnmap -> /usr/bin/nmapfe
/bin/xnmap -> /bin/nmapfe
The last one is a broken link.

Expected Results:  rpm should check for creating broken links. At minimum a
warning 'created a link to non-existing file' should be given, or preferably
'trying to create link to non-existing file. Proceed?'


Additional info:

The problem has also been reported to the
maintainer of the nmap-frontend package.
Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2002-12-06 17:09:32 UTC 
This is a package, not rpm, problem. The problem
is more complicated than stat'ing the target, as
there are implicit ordering constraints (and
painful loops) on installed packages that would be
needed as well (read: 2nd package may install target that
1st package symlinks too).