As far I've seen, see bugs 533831 and 465409, starting with version 4.6 rpm exits 0 even if the scriptlets (all but %pre and %preun) exit with error. IMHO this breaks legacy rpm behaviour (i.e. pre version 4.6) and leads to misunderstandings since a simple test on the rpm exit code is not reliable anymore. In other words the rpm exit status tells that the software itself has been replaced (updated) by a newer version but you know nothing about all the others steps involed with a change management process (rebuilding of library cache, configuration migration, service restart an so on). Is there a way tho revert to the old behaviour or to have them toghether? How reproducible: Always, just place exit 1 in you rpm %post scriptlet.
The problem is that a simple integer value is nowhere near sufficient for encoding the status of an operation potentially involving thousands of packages. The new exit code simply reflects (like you point out) what rpm knows for sure: whether the software on disk was installed/updated/removed or not. One possibility could be treating the exit code as a bitfield: one bit for "one or more scriptlets failed" and another for "one or more package failed to install/remove", so you would have at least a hint if everything went smoothly or not, but the warning bit still tells you preciously little about what/where the actual problem was. Rpm could also add status field to headers upon package install/upgrade, eg "one or more scriptlets failed when installing this package" but that wont help with erasure failures as there's no place to persistently record the failure. Oh and rpm does issue callbacks on all scriptlet failures so librpm API users can track what happens during the transaction (eg yum collects this information and logs them as warnings/errors).
I agree with you, from the point of view of the rpm API a simple integer value might not be sufficient for encoding the status a massive rpm operation. However, for a batch script, a simple warning message is not sufficient to tell that your software upgrade went wrong due to a failure in the %post scriptlet leaving you mission critical application stopped due to simple typo in a configuration file... So I think rpm (yum behaves the same way) should treat errors in %post script as before or, at least, it should be possible to choose the old or the new approach with a macro or via a command line switch.
Created attachment 402709 [details] rpm-4.6.0 and rpm 4.6.1 patch A patch to revert to the old behaviour and consider non-pre scriptlet errors as warnings only if the new macro _ignore_post_scripts_errors is set. This is the rpm 4.6.x patch
Created attachment 402711 [details] rpm-4.7.1 patch A patch to revert to the old behaviour and consider non-pre scriptlet errors as warnings only if the new macro _ignore_post_scripts_errors is set. This is the rpm 4.7.1 patch
Created attachment 402712 [details] rpm-4.7.2 patch A patch to revert to the old behaviour and consider non-pre scriptlet errors as warnings only if the new macro _ignore_post_scripts_errors is set.
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Changed release version due to FC11 EOL
Fedora 13 (rpm-4.8.0) shows the same behaviour. To revert to the old one, the patch in comment #5 can be applied.
Created attachment 460569 [details] A patch for rpm 4.8.1 This issue is still around in Release 14.
Ciao Paolo. I have also tracked this here https://bugs.launchpad.net/rpm/+bug/675954
Created attachment 523397 [details] rpm-4.9.1 patch A patch for rpm 4.9.1.1 (FC15)
Are there any plans to get this fixed?
This issue is very important for Eclipse package (www.eclipse.org). Eclipse is shipped with a plugin management system/update system which needs to be launched when additional Eclipse plugins are installed via RPM.
IMHO it's important in every unattended installation process. Could you solve with the patches I've provided?
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(In reply to comment #15) > IMHO it's important in every unattended installation process. > Could you solve with the patches I've provided? HeHe, Paolo, this is an endless saga, no doubt. I forgot to post here a link to the same issue discussed some time ago on another mailing list http://rpm5.org/community/rpm-users/0834.html. Cheers