I tried to install <URL:http://www.mit.edu/~jik/xrn-9.03b15-1jik.i386.rpm> with rpm-4.0.4-7x.18 with "rpm -i xrn-9.03b15-1.jik.i386.rpm". It segfaulted. Then I tried "/usr/lib/rpm/rpmi -i xrn-9.03b15-1jik.i386.rpm". It worked and generated a bunch of warnings of the form "warning: group jik does not exist - using root". Then I tried rebuilding the package with "%defattr(-,root,root)", which of course I should have done in the first place. The new package, <URL:http://www.mit.edu/~jik/xrn-9.03b15-2jik.i386.rpm>, installed with "rpm -i" without any errors. I'm not going to attach the RPMs because I'm not sure you want 198KB RPMs cluttering up Bugzilla. If you want to attach them, you can download and attach them, or if I should do it, let me know. I'll try to leave them at the URLs above until the contents of this ticket imply that they're no longer needed.
Hmmm, here's what I see: bash$ sudo rpm -i xrn-9.03b15-1jik.i386.rpm warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root warning: user jik does not exist - using root warning: group jik does not exist - using root bash$ rpm --version RPM version 4.0.4 bash$ rpm -q rpm rpm-4.0.4-7x.18 Dunno what's up, please reopen with more info so I can reproduce. Perhaps you're using LDAP passwrods? There's an insoluble segfault with PAM vis a vis statically linked binaries like rpm, the workaround is to run nscd.