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User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Description of problem:
My linux system crashed -- perhaps because of a hardware problem -- deleting and
corrupting files.  After I got the system working again, I found evidence that
something was wrong with the glibc files.  up2date did not help because I had
the latest versions of these files.  So I decided to erase these files using
"rpm -e --nodeps" with the intent of reloading them.  But this command did not
merely erase the related rpm files; it also erased about three-quarters of the
/usr/bin directory, all the /sbin directory, and I don't know what else. 
Commands like ls and, more importantly, init no longer worked.  I couldn't even
halt the system.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Didn't try


Additional info:

About once every ten days or so, my computer freezes up, forcing me to use the
computer reset button.  I suspect a hardware problem because there is no pattern
to the freezing.  But the bug that I am reporting did not freeze the computer;
rather, it deleted common commands.  I've saved the bad root file system but do
not see why it would contain any relevant information.  

I can't exclude the possibility that the original crash did something that
allowed all these files to be erased when I used rpm.

If this bug is not unique to my system, then I suggest that something be added
to the rpm code to prevent people from doing what I did.  The catastrophic
consequences were not obvious.