Bug 18770 - non root running of rpm is overly unhelpful
Summary: non root running of rpm is overly unhelpful
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: rpm
Version: 7.0
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Jeff Johnson
QA Contact: David Lawrence
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2000-10-10 04:50 UTC by Idcmp
Modified: 2007-04-18 16:29 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-10-10 04:50:09 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Idcmp 2000-10-10 04:50:06 UTC
A frequent mistake I make, and have seen many others make, is to run rpm as
a non root user when doing installs.  Previously the error message was a
unhelp "unable to open rpm database".  Now the error message is a long
discourse about the possible need to upgrade my rpm database.

It would be nice if RPM did a simple check to see if the user was not uid 0
and prior to giving database migration instructions simply suggested I
become root first.

I'm willing to provide a patch if this would accelerated getting this
feature implemented.

Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2000-10-10 21:00:30 UTC
FWIW, the "long discourse" is all that prevents disaster when upgrading from
rpm-3.0.x to rpm-4.0.

If you want to attempt a patch, see dbiOpen() in lib/rpmdb.c. I'll be happy to
consider changes,
but, I warn you ahead of time, the change is much trickier than it looks. Please
reopen this
bug if you succeed with a patch. Meanwhile, since the "long discourse" is
necessary and
not otherwise harmful, I'm gonna close this report.


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.