How to force RPM to install a package and NOT replace files that conflict

centos7rpm

I've got an older vendor-supplied package that I'm trying to install on CentOS 7. It installs things into /usr/lib, but there's a conflict with the /usr/lib directory itself.

The /usr/lib directory as installed:

ls -ld /usr/lib
dr-xr-xr-x. 42 root root 4096 Jun 10 08:44 /usr/lib

The /usr/lib directory as specified in the package:

rpm -qlpv <package file>
drwxr-xr-x    2 root    root  0 Jun 22  2006 /usr/lib

I could use –replacefiles with rpm to get it to go on, but that's not actually the RIGHT thing to do here. Instead, I'd like rpm to just skip installing the /usr/lib directory (it's already there, after all), and just install the contents.

The –excludepath option doesn't actually seem to do anything (I still get the error), and (according to -vv output) would exclude most of the package anyway.

For the moment, in a test environment, I can do –replacefiles, but I feel there must be some 'more correct' way to deal with this situation.

NOTE: Getting an updated vendor package IS on my TODO list, but isn't going to happen for some time, so I need a better near-term solution.

Best Answer

I'd suggest installing it into another directory with rpm --prefix and pull out the stuff you need. Alternatively, you could extract it directly with rpm2pcio package.rpm | cpio -idmv.

Using --prefix does at least have the benefit of executing any post-install scripts, etc... in the RPM.

Hope the helps!

Related Solutions

RPM Build Issue

It helps to understand a little about how RPM works here.

RPM will be automatically adding requirements for particular classifications of file that it knows about (eg ELF shared libraries, #! scripts, etc):

http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm-snapshot/s1-rpm-depend-auto-depend.html

What is happening here is that some of the contents of the payload have been picked up with having requirements that are not packaged:

/home/rpmbuild/python/Python-2.6.4-root/usr/bin/python2.6
/usr/local/bin/python2.6

We can verify this by running rpmbuild -bi Python.spec to run the build up to the install stage. Based on the information supplied above you could search for files:

find /home/rpmbuild/python/Python-2.6.4-root/ -type f -exec grep \ /home/rpmbuild/python/Python-2.6.4-root/usr/bin/python2.6

I'd say you're looking at:

/home/rpmbuild/Python-2.6.4-root/usr/bin/python2.6-config for the the file that has a shebang that refers to the full buildroot and a bunch of scripts that refer to /usr/local/bin/python2.6

RPM isn't doing anything wrong here, and the details of the right way to fix this up will often be specific to the build of the package you're building.

One approach to fixing this would be to set AutoProvReq: no in the preamble of the SPEC file, eg directly after Group: Python. This should give you an installable RPM but you could argue that it's not taking full advantage of RPM's dependency model and you'd have incorrect paths in some of your Python package files.

Lets specifically look at the Python build and try and understand what we could do to fix this in a more comprehensive way.

Your %install section uses the macro %makeinstall which expands by default as:

[pnasrat@centos5 ~]$ rpm -E '%makeinstall'

  /usr/bin/make \
    prefix=/usr \
    exec_prefix=/usr \
    bindir=/usr/bin \
    sbindir=/usr/sbin \
    sysconfdir=/etc \
    datadir=/usr/share \
    includedir=/usr/include \
    libdir=/usr/lib64 \
    libexecdir=/usr/libexec \
    localstatedir=/var \
    sharedstatedir=/usr/com \
    mandir=/usr/share/man \
    infodir=/usr/share/info \
  install

For reference I tend to consult the upstream Fedora SPEC, which is much more complicated but can be made to build (with some modification and a patch for autotools versions IIRC) a parallel python26 package. I'm not going to go into the detail of that right now but if we look at how they install the key line is:

make install DESTDIR=%{buildroot}

I'd strongly recommend doing that rather than disabling AutoProvReq. As Python is a libtool based build that is probably better than the %makeinstall macro as you've already configured prefix. That seems to do the right thing by inspecting here. Note, if you are rebuilding with this change you'll also want to add:

%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

And want a similar rm line at the beginning of the %install section. This all seems to work for me:

[pnasrat@centos5 RPMS]$ rpm --test -ivh x86_64/Python-2.6.4-1.x86_64.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]

It might well be worth using a python2.6 package provided elsewhere, I believe IUSCommunity provides packages, as documented here - http://agilesysadmin.net/recent-python-on-rhel-or-centos. These are probably much closer to the fedora packages.

Linux – rpm -Uvh & yum install

yum interfaces with the online repository related to your version of CentOS.

rpm is the package manager and packaging format for applications developed for the Red Hat/CentOS platform. Your rpm command is installing a packaged that was downloaded and is not part of a yum repository.

In the Windows world, it's like the difference between Windows Update (yum) and downloading a piece of software and double-clicking an installer (rpm).

It also appears as though you're using a version of postgresql that is newer than the one available through the normal CentOS channels ("Base" and "Updates"). The package being installed by the yum command you listed is coming from a different third-party software repository.

It looks like you're using the postgres database packages provided directly be PostgreSQL instead of the ones that come via CentOS. The instructions and reasoning are detailled here.

As a result, you've been asked to prevent the version that's is distributed with CentOS from installing by using the exclude= statements you listed. This is a precautionary measure to avoid a conflict between the older version of postgresql from CentOS and the newer one you're installing.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

RPM Build Issue

Linux – rpm -Uvh & yum install

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