Upgrading from rpm-3.0.5-0.5 to rpm-4.0-0.56 failed with the following dependency problems: rpm -Uvh rpm-4.0-0.56.i386.rpm error: failed dependencies: libbz2.so.1 is needed by rpm-4.0-0.56 rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1 is needed by rpm-4.0-0.56 I added bzip2 to the upgrade, as well as a lot of rpm's that bzip would breake and retried. I managed to remove all dependencies from the packages, but ended up with these: rpm -Uvh ImageMagick-* bzip2-1.0.1-2.i386.rpm rpm-4.0-0.56.i386.rpm rpm-build-4.0-0.56.i386.rpm gnorpm-0.9-22.i386.rpm chkfontpath-1.7.2-5.i386.rpm passwd-0.64.1-4.i386.rpm ucd-snmp-* rpmfind-1.5-3.i386.rpm error: failed dependencies: rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1 is needed by ImageMagick-5.2.2-4 rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1 is needed by ImageMagick-5.2.2-4 rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1 is needed by ImageMagick-devel-5.2.2-4 rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1 is needed by ImageMagick-devel-5.2.2-4 And so on... I downgraded to rpm-3.0.4-0.48 and retried: rpm -Uvh rpm-4.0-0.56.i386.rpm only packages with major numbers <= 3 are supported by this version of RPM error: rpm-4.0-0.56.i386.rpm cannot be installed Would --nodeps be safe to use in the former case (wouldn't help in the latter).
The released rpm-3.0.5 knows how to satisy rpmlib(...) feature dependencies, rpm-3.0.5-0.5 had not this functionality. Adding --nodeps would probably permit upgrading rpm-3.0.5-0.5 ro rpm-4.0-0.56 Otherwise upgrade to rpm-3.0.5 packages ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/dist/3.0.x in order to satsfy rpmlib(...) requirements.
Upgraded to rpm-3.0.5-7.6x.i386.rpm (latest on ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/dist/rpm-3.0.x/) and then upgraded further on to rpm-4.0-0.56. The result is that rpm cannot see any installed packages: "rpm -qa" results in nothing, no error, no packages. Querying a specific package also results in nothing. My rpm database is still there as far as I can tell: ls -l /var/lib/rpm total 29577 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16384 Jul 26 09:37 conflictsindex.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5275648 Jul 26 09:37 fileindex.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16384 Jul 26 09:37 groupindex.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28672 Jul 26 09:37 nameindex.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25519304 Jul 26 09:37 packages.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 90112 Jul 26 09:37 providesindex.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 180224 Jul 26 09:37 requiredby.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16384 Jul 26 09:37 triggerindex.rpm Something was not done by the rpm-4.0-0.56 post install script, but what might that be?
On an additional note, running rpm with -vv results in this: rpm -vv -qa D: opening db index /var/lib/rpm/Packages rdonly mode=0x0 D: closed db index /var/lib/rpm/Packages Seems that rpm doesn't know the filenames of the rpm database files or that the files weren't renamed to match?