Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 50515
Unexpected behavior if file would overrides directory
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:35:21 EDT
Description of Problem: When having an RPM containing a symlink or ordinary file having the same name as an already existing directory, a file with a strange name will be created without any message/warning. The strange name may be ok (a suffix like .rpmnew would be perhaps better) but a warning would be advisably in any case. Steps to Reproduce: 1. build package containing file /tmp/XXX 2. mkdir /tmp/XXX 3. rpm -U <package>.rpm 4. ls -d /tmp/X* Actual Results: no message at (3) /tmp/XXX /tmp/XXX;3b670b3a Expected Results: a warning Additional Information: rpm-4.0.3-0.84
Created attachment 25671 [details] sample spec-file for step (1)
This is a packaging problem. rpm does not permit (and never has) replacing a directory on disk with a symlink from the package. You need to fix what ever package is trying to do this. Meanwhile the strange name is a semi-colon followed by the install time in seconds. New to rpm-4.0.3 is installing with a temp name (i.e. the name followed by the semi-colon and time), and then renaming into place.
How can I determine if a package has such a problem and which files are being affected? Have I to wait for bugreports of users who don't know why they have such files? A warning at installation-time would be highly appropriate.