Some un-answered questions
 

Hi All,

I gave a interview yesterday. I did well on all files / server configuration etc.

I could not answer few questions, one of them is :-

Quest If we make a tar file of all binaries and other files which we can see by rpm -ql package-name, and extract those tar files on some other server where that package is not present, will now our package (extracted from tar file) work properly.


Pls help me with this.

Thanks in advance.

you need to post each question in a seperate thread, or you'll get lost. delete three of them above, and open a new thread for each as they are not related to each other.

As with any manually installed rpm file - what is the main reason that it won't install? Hint: you normally get told by the output of the install command....

If your backup tarball contains your RPM database as well, then the existing RPM database on the other system will be overwritten - which is not necessarily a good thing.

If your backup tarball does NOT contain your RPM database, then you will end up having binaries placed onto the new system without the existing RPM database knowing anything about them.

If you plan to maintain and update a system based on any RPM tool, then you shouldn't use tarballs for such tasks.

linux

Thanks people.

Some of the packages will work, some - no.
rpm may also have pre/post install scripts and it may be essential to run them so package will be able to function as it should.

For example, packages that install shared libraries usually also run ldconfig.

And what about the dependencies?

I understand question as "what difference will made installation as rpm package or as tar files"

It's implied that installation is possible, i.e. dependencies are met.

But when I came to think about, it can be viewed another way too: rpm installation will fail with "missing dependencies ..." message, while tar installation will succeed and only then installed programs will (likely) fail to run.

exactly. the state of the destination server is totally unknown.