I noticed that bash and libtermcap have a prereq loop, where bash requires libtermcap, and libtermcap requires bash. If I enter both of these packages on a single rpm command, I expect rpm to handle the prereq loop. When I enter: rpm -r /mnt -ih bash-1* libtermcap-2* rpm correctly installs both, and resolves the prereq loop. However, when I enter: rpm -r /mnt -ih libtermcap-2* bash-1* rpm complains with: loop in prerequisite chain: libtermcap bash libtermcap it seems to me that order of the arguments on the rpm command line should not matter... I saw this problem on both the 6.1 and 6.2 release of RH. The workaround is to specify bash before libtermcap when installing a list of RPMs
You are correct that thae ordering of arguments should not matter. I'll take a look in rpm-4.1, and am marking the bug DEFFERED
Please be aware that this bug is blocking LUI, the linux utility for cluster install, from being able to do clean remote RPM installs. (LUI is a open source product released under the GPL). LUI is able to install groups of nodes remotely from a list of RPMs. When I specify all the rpms to install remotely on a single command line, depending on the order the the rpms are specified in, remote installation very often fails because of this bug. The workaround, which is quite tedious, is to find which order the rpm command likes, and specify the rpms in that order...
I just checked in a change to fix this problem in rpm-4.1. The change is headed for rpm-4.0.1, and (possibly) rpm-3.0.7, but it's gonna take a while to make sure the change is OK before releasing updates and errata and such. See lib/depends.[ch] if you need the change sooner.
*** Bug 17377 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***