Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 3802
rpm -V wish list
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:50 EDT
I use "rpm -V" to find installation problems and unexpected changes. A wonderful addition to help this would be: o A new option: --notime ... Ignore files if the only change is a changed time (ie, kernel-source .depend files) o A new option: --nocfg ... Ignore changed files if they are marked as configuration files. This will help reduce output to things that aren't expected to change. o A new option: --nouser, or --nogrp, or something like that to ignore changed files when the only change is user and/or group. Some rpm files seem to want to install files for a given nonstandard user, but don't install that user in /etc/passwd. A better way to do this would be: At install time, don't install if the user & group don't exist. Add an option to force install to a named user and group. "rpm -Uvh --force package.rpm" would force an install to the nonexistent user & group. "rpm -Uvh --user=root --group=root package.rpm" would change all non-existent user & group while installing the package so there would be no complaints.
Recommendation has ben forwarded to package developer/maintainer.
*** Bug 3800 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** rpm -V complains about many, many files in kernel-source and kernel-headers once one has made a kernel. A wonderful enhancement would be to mark, somehow, all the files that one expects to change in these rpm files. For example, all the ".depend" files. I have pages and pages of "rpm -V" complaints in kernel-headers and kernel-source. I know this is normal behavior. My wish is for some way to mark files that one expects to change so rpm -V (perhaps with some other option) won't list such files. When using the output of "rpm -Va" to look for system problems, it would make life much much easier!
All but --nocfg are implemented in rpm-4.0.3. FWIW, the effect of --nocfg can be trivially implemented by doing rpm -Va | grep -v ' c ' and, with almost no additiona effort, can be configured using a popt alias in /etc/popt with rpm -Va --pipe. I see little need to add the option to rpm's default configuration.