Note: This bug is displayed in read-only format because the product is no longer active in Red Hat Bugzilla.

Bug 9878

Summary:	rpm -Va reports files missing even though they are there
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Stephen Rasku <redhat>
Component:	rpm	Assignee:	Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-03-01 07:14:49 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Stephen Rasku 2000-03-01 07:14:49 UTC

For example, rpm reports:

missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/AUTHORS
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/BUG-REPORTING
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/COPYING
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/COPYING.LIB
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/CREDITS
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/CURRENT_NOTES
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/ChangeLog
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/FAQ
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/KNOWN_BUGS
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/NEWS
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/NOTES
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/README
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/RELEASE-POLICY
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/TODO
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/example.motifbind
missing    /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4/motifbind.sun+linux

However:

ls /usr/doc/lesstif-0.89.4 reveals:

AUTHORS        CREDITS        KNOWN_BUGS  RELEASE-POLICY
BUG-REPORTING  CURRENT_NOTES  NEWS        TODO
COPYING        ChangeLog      NOTES       example.motifbind
COPYING.LIB    FAQ            README      motifbind.sun+linux

I am running rpm 3.0.4-0.38.  I ran rpm as a regular user and the files are
not accessible by that user.  However, if I do an ls as the user, it knows
that the files are there but it lists them all as "Permission denied".

rpm should:

1. Display a more useful error message such as "inaccessible" (or "unknown"
if "inaccessible" is too long), or
2. dissallow the user to run -Va unless they are root.

Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2000-08-10 05:33:23 UTC

Because of the use of rpm -Va in numerous scripts, it's not possible to change
the output
format to, for example, supply a more informative error message. Either run rpm
-Va as root
or fix the permissions of the doc files in question.