Hosed my rpm installation (i.e. "rpm -e rpm")

Mad Scientist · 05-05-2006, 07:39 PM

I just tried to upgrade my Fedora installation from Core 3 to Core 4. I used a technique I have used successfully in the past, namely

Code:

apt-get dist-upgrade

Before I executed that command, I updated my source.list.d/*.list files to use the Fedora Core 4 repositories. Everything went according to plan, but the rpm, apt-get, and yum packages failed to install.

Now I have a bootable Fedora Core 4 installation with no installed rpm tool. When I try to use rpm, I get

Code:

rpm: command not found

I followed the instructions I found at http://www.redhat.com/archives/rpm-l.../msg00143.html , but I had no success. Specifically, I got

Code:

[root@machine ~]# rpm -ivh --nodeps rpm-4.4.1-21.i386.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]

You have (unsupported)
        /var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm       db1 format installed package headers
Please install rpm-4.0.4 first, and do
        rpm --rebuilddb
to convert your database from db1 to db3 format.

error: execution of %pre scriptlet from rpm-4.4.1-21 failed, exit status 1
error: skipping rpm-4.4.1-21 install, %pre scriptlet failed rc 2
[root@machine ~]# rpm --rebuilddb
/usr/lib/rpm/rpmdb: error while loading shared libraries: libdb-3.1.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Does anyone have any idea how I can get myself out of this jam?

Thanks for your time.

Brian1 · 05-05-2006, 08:05 PM

What you are doing seems odd. Looks like rpm is there since root can run the command.

As root run the command ' rpm -qa | grep rpm '. And post the output.

Brian1

Mad Scientist · 05-06-2006, 11:56 AM

Well, rpm is there in the sense that I followed the instructions in that link I gave in my original post and downloaded and unpacked a binary version of RPM I found on the web. The RPM package itself is not installed.

Without having downloaded and unpacked this RPM binary, I always get

Code:

rpm: command not found

Having downloaded and unpacked the binary, I get

Code:

/usr/lib/rpm/rpmq: error while loading shared libraries: libdb-3.1.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Brian1 · 05-07-2006, 10:16 AM

Never done this but how about pulling the rpm command off the Install CD.
I think if you boot with the FC4 Rescue CD you might be able to do it.
I would install the version that is on the CD.

Brian1

Mad Scientist · 05-08-2006, 12:38 PM

I was never able to get any help from the rescue CD, because I ran into the chicken and egg problem of how do I install the rpm package without having the rpm package installed?

I found another Fedora Core 5 machine and copied over all of the files in the rpm package one-by-one (using "rpm -q --filesbypkg rpm" to get the list). It seems like everything is more or less okay now. However, I cannot install the rpm package itself. I get

Code:

[root@machine ~]# rpm -ivh rpm-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]

You have (unsupported)
        /var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm       db1 format installed package headers
Please install rpm-4.0.4 first, and do
        rpm --rebuilddb
to convert your database from db1 to db3 format.

error: %pre(rpm-4.4.2-15.2.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping rpm-4.4.2-15.2

I have run "rpm --rebuilddb" several times, and I'm just not having any luck getting the rpm package installed. I have un-installed and re-installed the gedit package successfully, though, so it looks like rpm is doing its job in that respect.

Do you have any idea why I am not allowed to install the rpm package itself?

Lenard · 05-08-2006, 01:45 PM

You can try the following as root of course;

cd /var/lib
tar czvf /tmp/rpmdb.tar.gz rpm (just in case we need the database files)
cd rpm
rm /var/lib/rpm rm -f __db*

Now reboot the system and get the latest rpm packages for FC5 from;
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...s/Fedora/RPMS/

(Note: your OP said from FC3 to FC4 but rpm-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm is for FC5)

popt-1.10.2-15.2.i386.rpm 06-Mar-2006 15:37 66K
rpm-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm 06-Mar-2006 15:37 647K
rpm-build-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm 06-Mar-2006 15:37 534K
rpm-devel-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm 06-Mar-2006 15:37 1.3M
rpm-libs-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm 06-Mar-2006 15:37 965K
rpm-python-4.4.2-15.2.i386.rpm 06-Mar-2006 15:37 51K

Place all the packages listed above in one location where they are the only rpm packages then as root type something like;

/usr/lib/rpm/rpmi -ivh *.rpm --force

Then rebuild the database; rpm --rebuilddb -vv

fred909 · 03-02-2007, 12:42 AM

I just upgraded to FC5 from FC4 and had this same problem. Somehow I had installed an atrpms version of rpm, so the upgrade failed. Yum would not install the non-atrpms version of rpm (it was the same version... maybe I should have forced this install). So I did a 'yum remove rpm' (similar to an 'rpm -e rpm')... which did get rid of the atrpms rpm package

, but left me with an un-upgradeable install.

I booted with disc 1 of FC3 and did a 'linux rescue'. With a working rpm from the cd I manually downloaded the rpms needed to reinstall from the redhat mirrors. I got stuck trying to go to the FC5 rpm version (which didn't work due to dependencies), the FC4 versions worked. I used 'rpm --root=/mnt/sysimage --oldversion -ivh rpm-xxxx.rpm (rpm-lib and more)' and it worked (--noscripts might be needed also if scripts are failing prior to instalation). I rebooted and 'yum -y update' worked.

fred