From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021003 Description of problem: rpm-4.1-1.06 was initially broken with some race condition that would cause lockups very often (with and without apt-get.) Since then rpm-4.1-9 was released as test packages. The reports of rpm-4.1-9 locking up may have been this bug in rpm that Conectiva fixed a few months ago. Those people who were using apt-get but aborted left behind __db* files which blocked rpm from working properly. Please check out these links: http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/rpm-list/2002-November/002126.html http://bugzilla.conectiva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4823 http://bugzilla.conectiva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4688 The fix mentioned in the above links have subsequently been tested on Red Hat and SuSE, although I'm not exactly sure why it works since rpm itself (without apt-get) leaves behind __db* files after normal use. Could someone please explain how this works? Most of Conectiva's Bugzilla is in Portuguese so I cannot read their solution to this problem. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Red Hat 8.0 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Use 3rd party apt-get. 2. CTRL-C abort before it finishes. Actual Results: rpm fails. Expected Results: rpm should be able to handle this situation.
The important part of the configuration change is "private", the rest just (more or less) duplicates what is compiled/configured by default in rpm. The effect of "private" is to use an internal, malloc'd environment, essentially eliminating the possibility of concurrent access with record locks, running the (minor but real IMHO) risk of 2 rpmdb writers clobbering everything. Hmmm, so all these hangs are coming from apt users. You might get someone with a clue about Conectiva apt to talk to me so that a real solution can be figgered. AFAIAC the "real" solution is to use NPTL on /dev/futex, almost there.
I see many lockups on RH 8.0 system, minimal install, in the class with my students when trying to heavily install various packages. Hope NTPL will give it away.
This bug continues on Redhat 9.0 with the newest version of apt from freshrpms. I have since added the lines to /etc/rpm/macros. Too early to tell if that helps. I thought 9.0 was supposed to have the famous NTPL?