After problems with rpm-3.0.4-5x (see bug 10763) I decided to downgrade to rpm-3.0.3-5x to build me a OpenSSH. However, the build breaks in %prep stage: + /bin/chown -Rhf root . /bin/chown: --no-dereference (-h) is not supported on this system Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.29466 (%prep) [root@saturnin SPECS]# rpm -qf `which chown` fileutils-3.16-9 The 3.0.3-5x rpm has no special requirements about fileutils. The %prep stage of the openssh.spec file contains only %setup -a 1, nothing more. [This sucks: OpenSSH requires rpm>=3.0.3 to --rebuild. 3.0.3 can't do chmod, 3.0.4 completely zarks up the cpio archive (see bug 10763), 3.0.5 doesn't exist for 5.x (glibc2.0) systems, the precompiled OpenSSH packages require glibc2.1. Doh!]
I should perhaps add that rpm 3.0.4 recompiles the whole package correctly (without any problems with chmod) but then fails to create a valid cpio archive (and consequently a valid .i386.rpm binary package).
To use rpm-3.0.4 on Red Hat 5.x add --nolibio to the command line To revert to rpm-3.0.3, grab the definitions of %_fixowner %_fixgroup %_fixperms from /usr/lib/rpm/macros in rpm-3.0.4, put in /etc/rpm/macros. Or simply comment the values out of /usr/lib/rpm/macros in rpm-3.0.3.
*** Bug 9411 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
More information on chmod: For hysterical reasons, lchown is not supported at all in 2.0.x kernels and libc5. That's the reason why chmod is failing. For other hysterical reasons, rpm does chown/chgrp/chmod when unpacking and patching virgin sources at the end of %prep, and this is a rather largish problem when running across, for example, a dangling symlink contained in a tarball. I still suggest that the correct solution is to undefine all of %_fixowner/%_fixuser/%_fixgroup and to control for ownership and mode within packaging. However, the support (and enabled in the default configuration!) for this "feature" must remain in rpm for legacy reasons. The other issue, building with rpm-3.0.4 using --nolibio, has been fixed in rpm-3.0.5-7.5x. configuration