very quick/simple rpm question
 

hello.
i am new to the world of linux. i am sorry that my first post is a new thread, please excuse me. however, this is a very simple question, and i have searched for an answer but cannot find one.

when using the terminal to install an rpm package, i type rpm - i *packagename.rpm*
it does not seem apparent that anything is happening after i do that. the only thing that happens is the cursor moves to a new line and blinks. after that anything i type does nothing.

does that mean the rpm is installed incorrectly?

the rpm that i was trying to install was the mozilla browser plugin rpm for xine so that i could view streaming video. i am trying to view distance education videos for my college course.

once again i apologize for being such a n00b, and any help is greatly appreciated.

Try rpm -ivh <packagename>.rpm

The 'v' means verbose and will give you information on successes and failures.
The 'h' will give you hash marks to mark progress.

rpm -ivh filename.rpm

this will allow you to see what is happening. have a read here.

http://man.linuxquestions.org/index....ction=0&type=2

good luck.

thanks for the read and the quick responses.

however the -ivh trick did not work :( . it still does the same thing. based on the read you provided, i then tried to type

[root@localhost xine]# rpm -Uvvh xine-mozilla-plugin-0.2-040302.i586.rpm

and this is what printed out...


D: ============== xine-mozilla-plugin-0.2-040302.i586.rpm
D: Expected size: 23712 = lead(96)+sigs(160)+pad(0)+data(23456)
D: Actual size: 23712
D: xine-mozilla-plugin-0.2-040302.i586.rpm: MD5 digest: OK (db11539394da84dfdedf0b4482be5b28)
D: opening db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages joinenv
D: opening db index /var/lib/rpm/Packages rdonly mode=0x0


i see that it was the expected size, and looks to be ok. but im still not sure if it worked because i cannot seem to view streaming video. can anybody give me any further insight as to what the printout means?

once again thank you.

-Uvvh - never used
-Uvh is upgrade, verbose, hash marks

Try typing in the command as per the above posts - you would only upgrade if you had an earlier version.

i tried typing exactly as stated above, but nothing happened. so i tried experimenting with the rpm commands and thats what printed out.

Open Mozilla and click help-->about plugins.

Is the plugin listed?

thanks xavierp, i dont know why i didnt think of that.

but no, its not:( .

also, after the printout it does the same thing.:confused:

It is possible that your rpm database has become corrupted. Did you ever hit Control-C while an rpm was installing? It is also possible that doing this will cause lock files to be left lying around, and so rpm can do nothing until those lock files are gone. If your rpm commands are hanging indefinitely, try a reboot.

Try this command as root:

rpm --rebuilddb

This will rebuild the rpm database from scratch. It may take a while, and gives no output. You can open another terminal and use the 'top' command to get a list of running processes - the rpmd process should be consuming a lot of resources while it works.

thanks. i just tried that and got

error: db4 error(16) from dbenv->remove: Device or resource busy

any ideas?

also, my rpm commands are hanging for like an hour. after that i try to end the process, probably not the best thing i could have done. i have tried to reboot but the same thing happens.

Have a look in /var/lib/rpm/

Here is a sample listing:

[root@linux dave]# ll /var/lib/rpm
total 49924
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 5500928 Oct 3 19:50 Basenames
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 12288 Sep 22 18:26 Conflictname
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16384 Oct 3 19:53 __db.001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1318912 Oct 3 19:53 __db.002
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 458752 Oct 3 19:53 __db.003
...
>

The files named __db.001, __db.002 etc are lock files that rpm uses.

Delete these files and then try the

rpm --rebuilddb

command again. If this doesn't work, I'm all out of info I'm afraid.

well it worked. thank you all.

i was able to install the package. it is also listed in plug ins now. however, now i have two more questions. it said on the xine website that it is an experimental feature and may crash and to uninstall if it does. well, they didnt lie- when i try to view streaming video mozilla crashes and shuts down.

i have tried to do rpm -e *packagename*

and it tells me
error: package xine-mozilla-plugin-0.2-040302.i586.rpm is not installed

however, i know it is still installed. are there any other methods of removal?
also, can anybody recommend any plugins that do work to play streaming media in mozilla?

Try mplayer plug-in
http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/

The name of the file you installed is not the name of the package, that is why you can't uninstall it.

To get a list of all packages on your system, use this command:

rpm -qa

'q' means query, and a means all packages. This will print a very long list of all the packages installed on your machine. To find a particular package - which you need to do, use

rpm -qa | grep mozilla

This will filter the list to just those entries containing the word 'mozilla'. Get used to using grep by the way that same trick is used very often.

So you should be able to see the package name of the thing you installed, so use the exact name it shows to do

rpm -e <package name>

and it should uninstall.