From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030313 Description of problem: With the test-4.1.1 or test-4.2 RPMs under RH 8.0 or 9, rpm -q sometimes exits silently rather than listing the package or saying it's not installed. This does not happen with RPM 4.0.4 or test-4.0.5. Unlike bug 89734, the presence or absence of NPTL (e.g. with LD_ASSUME_KERNEL) does not prevent the bug from being reproduced. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): rpm-4.2-1 How reproducible: Depends on how fast you can slam the Up Arrow and Enter keys on your keyboard... :/ Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run the following command/shell script as root (changing the kernel-utils RPM filename as necessary): while : ; do rpm -e --justdb kernel-utils ; rpm -i --justdb kernel-utils-2.4-8.29.i386.rpm ;done 2. In a second console, repeatedly run the command "rpm -q kernel-utils". After you run the command the first time, you may want to alternately press the up arrow key with your right hand and the enter key with your left hand, very quickly. You may need to do this a few dozen times, although the faster you do it the fewer times you'll need to do it. 3. If two shell prompt lines appear without any intervening output from RPM, the bug has been reproduced. (See the "Actual Results" for an example.) Actual Results: Snippet of output: [barryn@localhost barryn]$ rpm -q kernel-utils kernel-utils-2.4-8.29 [barryn@localhost barryn]$ rpm -q kernel-utils package kernel-utils is not installed [barryn@localhost barryn]$ rpm -q kernel-utils [barryn@localhost barryn]$ rpm -q kernel-utils package kernel-utils is not installed [barryn@localhost barryn]$ Expected Results: When rpm -q shirks its responsibilities, I'd like to know why. (RPM 4.0.4 and test-4.0.5, for instance, sometimes display database lock errors in response to rpm -q which make it clear that the database was locked by another RPM instance.) Additional info: As with bug 89734, I can't think of any major consequences of this bug, but it might have larger implications that I'm not aware of.
http://math.uci.edu/~bnathan/.vlr/ Inside that directory is "vlr3", a copy of /var/lib/rpm which is corrupted in such a way that "rpm -q kernel-utils" *always* responds with silence. (This is actually the result of a failed attempt to reproduce bug 89738.)
I experienced no output from rpm -q after an upgrade to test-4.2 too, although the silence went away after about 30 minutes. I assumed it was because the db was still being rebuilt in the background or something, but I don't know for sure. See Bug 90931.
I suspect that the problem was fixed in patch2 to db-4.1.25 from sleepycat, as there were excessive selects when blocked on some resource temporarily. Otherwise, this bug is ancient. Reopen if you can reproduce with rpm-4.2.3 or later.
Red Hat Linux 7.3 and Red Hat Linux 9 are no longer supported by Red Hat, Inc. f you are currently still running Red Hat Linux 7.3 or 9, you are strongly advised to upgrade to a current Fedora Core release or Red Hat Enterprise Linux or comparable. Some information on which option may be right for you is available at http://www.redhat.com/rhel/migrate/redhatlinux/. Closing as CANTFIX.