[KLUG Members] rpm trouble

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the RPM database in RH8 is well
> > known to be really unstable and die into seg fault mania at the
> > slightest flick of the pony's tail.  But we are talking about VERY old
> > software.
> Yeah, I'd heard RH8 was bad.  Is it really that old?  

It official reached EOL on December 31st, 2003. And it has been around
since 2002 (October?).  That is pretty old.

> I guess there have 
> been four new releases since then...!  

Not to mention the advant of a whole new line of mainstream kernels
(2.6.x vs. 2.4.x) which resolve many of the issues RH8 was trying to
hack around (hotplug, USB support, etc...)

> I didn't know there were such.  But I found these:
> gimp-print-4.2.7-2.i386.rpm      gimp-print-lib-4.2.2-2.i686.rpm
> gimp-print-ijs-4.2.2-2.i386.rpm  gimp-print-utils-4.2.7-2.i386.rpm
> I started with gimp-print-ijs and by trial-and-error slowly traced 
> dependencies back.  Of course the last requested file, gimp-print-utils, 
> caused a seg fault.  So no joy.
> > Sounds very much like RH8,  your only chance is to run the
> > removes/adds/updates with scripts disabled; and you won't like the
> > results of that.
> I don't know what you mean here; what scripts?  Is 'rpm' a wrapper 
> script or something?  Or you mean --nodeps?

I mean --noscripts

> > Does rpm --rebuilddb succeed?
> It did, yeah... but I don't know what that means.

It means you RPM package database is at least intact and parsable.  If
--rebuilddb dies, then your just done.

> Thanks again for your help.  At least I'll gain a little understanding 
> of my system, if nothing else.  But are there any other ideas out there? 
>   Or do I have to commit to the full FC3 revamp in order to get printing 
> again?

Well, backup /home, reinstall, restore /home.  It is much safer and
easier that upgrade facilities provided by other platforms.