When upgrading to 5.2 from downloaded rpms, netkit-base cannot be upgraded, just giving the error message: error: netkit-base-0.10-13.i386.rpm cannot be installed This led to multiple versions of netkit-base being installed, which I could not delete. I tried to install a 5.0 netkit-base rpm with --force to try and get it to replace the other two, but this didn't work. Now I have: ~# rpm -q netkit-base netkit-base-0.10-10 netkit-base-0.10-5 netkit-base-0.10-13 ~# rpm -e netkit-base "netkit-base" specifies multiple packages ~# rpm -e netkit-base-0.10-10 ~# rpm -e netkit-base-0.10-5 ~# rpm -e netkit-base-0.10-13 ~# rpm -q netkit-base netkit-base-0.10-10 netkit-base-0.10-5 netkit-base-0.10-13 The files actually installed from the package correspond to the 0.10-13 version, but: ~# rpm -Uvh --force netkit-base-0.10-10.rpm netkit-base ################################################## error: netkit-base-0.10-10.i386.rpm cannot be installed However, despite this error message, the installed files now correspond to the 0.10-10 version. This was all done with all three netkit-base rpms in the current directory. The error doesn't appear to affect the working of ping nad inetd, containted in the package.
Is it possible it is the same triggers problem as in bug report #103?
Yes. Thank you, doing rpm -e --notriggers <packagename> deleted the unwanted packages. However, I had to do rpm --rebuilddb, or else rpm -q --showtriggers netkit-base gave two lines of error: could not read database record. I looked for a bug report for RPM before I put this one in, but I only looked under 5.2.
Upgrade your rpm to the latest available (2.5.5-5.2 as of this writing) or you may experience trigger related problems again. It is possible to have multiple versions of packages installed if you use --force. Normally each package can be deinstalled by doing rpm -q name rpm -e name-version-release for each package displayed. However, because of a bug in the trigger code, rpm (2.5 <= version < 2.5.2) needs the "--notriggers" option to successfully remove certain packages: samba, ypbind, bootparamd, Xaw3d-devel, portmap, ypserv Any/every time that rpm segfaults you should also do rpm --rebuilddb
~$ rpm -q rpm rpm-2.5.5-5.2 rpm was the first package I upgraded when trying to go from 5.1 to 5.2. I was trying to remove netkit-base, which isn't one of the packages you mentioned, and rpm didn't segfault, it just didn't work. Doing a --rebuilddb didn't help when the multilple packages were installed. It _started off_ with two pacakges - I only used force after that. I had a similar problem about six months ago where sowngrading to an uninstalled, earlier version, with --force (NOT --oldpackage), and then upgrading to the wanted version fixed the problem. As a side issue, and probably a separate bug, rpm -q --triggers foo gives --triggers: unknown option, whether or not the package foo is installed or not. On the other hand, it's fixed now...