Bug 79077

Summary:	rpm creates broken symlinks
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Juho Schultz <juho.schultz>
Component:	rpm	Assignee:	Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7.3
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2002-12-05 13:18:34 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

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).