[LON-CAPA-users] RPM update

[Martin Siegert]

Hi Lars,

On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 09:03:16PM -0700, Lars Jensen wrote:
> Martin,
> 
> Excuse my ignorance about updating a RedHat system - I'm used to
> debian (which is much easier). I did the 
> check-rpms -v -r --update -ftp rufus.w3.org/linux/redhat/updates/6.2/en/os
> and it seems that what this command did was to copy all the rpm's that
> needs updating to the directory /mnt/redhat/RedHat/RPMS - it did not
> actually do the update, did it? 

No. It didn't. :-(

> was it supposed to? 

Yes.

> If not, is this what
> I need to do (as root):
> 
> cd /mnt/redhat/RedHat/RPMS
> rpm -hUv *
> 
> If not, what should I do next to accomplish the update?

You are running into a problem with (what I would call misconfigured) ftp
servers that serve several versions of the same package. Basically,
RedHat forgot to delete the older package when releasing the newer one.
Sigh. I thought I had worked around that problem (this is not the first
time this has happened): basically check-rpms downloads both packages
and then figures out which one is the newer one and then deletes the older
package. If the download of either package fails check-rpms cannot do anything:
it waves its hands and gives up in disgust. That's what has happened in
your case.

Anyway, the correct packages that you want to upgrade to are
libpcap-0.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm
tcpdump-3.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm
as check-rpms indicated.

In those cases where check-rpms guesses correctly, you can omit the -r
flag, i.e., run "check-rpms -v --update ...", and (hopefully) everything
just works.

> Regarding error messages from the check-rpms -v -r --update -ftp, this
> is what I got - the main messags seems to be that there are two newer 
> versions available of the libpcap, ncftpget, and tcpdump packages.
> Should I erase the older one from /mnt/redhat/RedHat/RPMS ?
> 
> Thanks again,
> Lars.
> 
> The ftp server provides multiple versions of the libpcap package.
> Downloading libpcap-0.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm and
> libpcap-0.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm in order to find out which is newer.
> /mnt/redhat/RedHat/RPMS/libpcap-0.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm:  287.28 kB   27.98
> kB/s
> ncftpget: file retrieval error: local file appears to be the same as the
> remote file, no transfer necessary.
> ** ncftpget failed with status 3.
> ** The server provides two versions of the same package:
> ** libpcap-0.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm and libpcap-0.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm.
> ** It appears that libpcap-0.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm is newer.
> The ftp server provides multiple versions of the tcpdump package.
> Downloading tcpdump-3.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm and
> tcpdump-3.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm in order to find out which is newer.
> /mnt/redhat/RedHat/RPMS/tcpdump-3.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm:  253.80 kB   12.63
> kB/s
> ncftpget: file retrieval error: local file appears to be the same as the
> remote file, no transfer necessary.
> ** ncftpget failed with status 3.
> ** The server provides two versions of the same package:
> ** tcpdump-3.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm and tcpdump-3.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm.
> ** It appears that tcpdump-3.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm is newer.
> Multiple versions of the same package were found on the server.
> However, due to ftp download problems it could not be verified
> which of the packages are the most recent ones.
> If the choices specified above appear to be correct, rerun check-rpms
> without the -lq (or --list-questionable) option. Otherwise, fix the
> download
> problems or install those packages separately first.

Can you please look into /mnt/redhat/RedHat/RPMS/ and check whether the
download of the packages really failed, i.e., do you have in that directory
the files:

libpcap-0.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm and libpcap-0.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm

and

tcpdump-3.6.2-10.6x.i386.rpm and tcpdump-3.6.2-11.6.2.0.i386.rpm

or do you have just one of the two?

Cheers,
Martin