Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 88693
RPM hangs while modifying database if multiple readers open
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:52:59 EDT
Description of problem: RPM hangs while modifying database if multiple readers open. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): rpm 4.2.0-0.69 How reproducible: Very. I've been able to reproduce this every time I've tried. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Verify that there are *no* __db* files in /var/lib/rpm 2. Open three terminals 3. In the first, execute "rpm -vv -qa" 4. Once output begins in the first terminal, execute "rpm -vv -qa" in the second 5. Once output begins in teh second terminal, execute "rpm -e inews" (or some other unnecessary package). Actual results: The two queries will complete. The removal of the package will hang. A trace of the process at this point reveals it is stuck in a futex() call. It must be killed forcefully. It will still have three __db files open according to lsof (though no open file descriptors to them), and all three remain on disk. The __db files, of course, must be removed before normal RPM interaction can resume. Expected results: Package should be removed. Additional info: This is on a Red Hat 9 system with about 900 packages installed, glibc 2.3.2-27.9 (and has been booted since installation), and all patches released through April 10th, 2003. System has plenty of memory free and a 1GHz Athlon CPU.
Running while true; do rpm -qa; sleep 1; done in 2 different windows, and then trying rpm -e time works for me with glibc-2.3.2-11.9 and kernel-smp-2.4.20-2.54