Description of Problem: Customer used up2date to install latest errata kernel (2.4.9-13) and verified it's functionality, then decided to remove the stock 2.4.7-10 using GnoRPM. He called us saying that grub.conf and parts of fstab weere missing. Investigation showed that he had NO kernels installed. He said there was no message warning him of any dependencies (not confirned by me). Fortunately I was able to get some working kernels installed for him (the network and loop modules were in use at the time) Expected Results: Do not rely on --allmatches --nodeps on an rpm -e, instead always use the version number on an rpm -e (ie: rpm -e kernel-2.4.9-13) and if there are dependencies warn the customer and offer the --nodeps option (again I have not confirmed this part).
Ouch. That does indeed sound pretty bad. I'll report this upstream. The maintainers are quite responsive.
In gnome bugzilla at: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64419
Gnorpm has been deprecated for the next version of RedHat. It will be replaced with a package called redhat-config-packages.