The /usr fs is mounted via nfs and read-only. I want to install some packages but omit files in /usr as the rpms are already installed on the server from which /usr is mounted. So I try for example (on the client) rpm -Uvh --excludepath /usr --nodeps kdetoys-1.1.2-3.sparc.rpm Response is: kdetoys unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/bin: cpio: chown failed - Bad file descriptor I expect rpm in case of --excludepath /somewhere to *totally* ignore those files of the package which would be placed in /somewhere. We even observed rpm trying to create files a la .rpmsave, .rpmorig, .rpmnew in the excluded path.
This problem will be addresses after rpm-4.0 is released.
--excludepath is fixed in rpm-4.0.2-0.19 and rpm-4.0.1-0.41. RO fs issues I'm collecting at bugzilla #4098 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 4098 ***