Having to create an RPM package in work that is required to "upgrade" the previous package.

Problem being that the UPGRADE must run the uninstall of the previous package with --noscripts as the option.

rpm -Uvh --noscripts packagename-version.rpm results in only the install scripts of the new package being disabled, not the otherway around.

As far as I can see there is no option with the RPM package manager to do this, however this cannot be a new problem.

Anyone know quite how to solve this?

Manually it would be the following:

rpm -e --noscripts package-1.0

rpm -i package-2.0.rpm

I can't do it manually on the production system however, and it is required to work with the -U option.

Easiest way of doing it in my head would be in the %pre scriptlet of package-2.0 having something that did

rpm -e --noscripts package-1.0

and forcing a -i option on the install of package-2.0 (I can either enforce, -U or -i but can't enforce 2 steps [e.g. -e --noscripts followed by a -i).

However I understand that rpm... can't run rpm inside of itself due to an inability to lock the rpmdb. I'm smashing my head against the proverbial brick wall here, so any help would be much appreciated.

The -noscripts option isn't intended for normal install/upgrade/uninstall operations. It's intended for developers.

Perhaps 'rpm -U --replacepkgs <packagename>' is what you need.

I am a developer

The problem is my package has to upgrade a previous package. Previous package however behaves incorrectly when upgrading.

For example:

Package-1.0 creates /tmp/file.ext on install.

In the %preun scriptlet the only code in it is basically

"rm -f /tmp/file.ext"

Package-2.0 during install checks if /tmp/file.ext exists. If so exits cleanly saying "oi oi! this file already exists, i've got nothing to do!"

If you run rpm -U package-2.0 it effectively does the following.

- install package-2.0 ("oi oi! this file already exists, i've nothing to do!")
- uninstall package-1.0 ("rm -f /tmp/file.ext")

Which means when you do "ls /tmp/ | grep -c file.ext" you get "0" as an output as the file doesnt exist.

Yet rpm -qa | grep package results in "package-2.0".

See what I mean?

I have a work around involving deleting the transaction lock database for RPM in the %post install scriptlet of package-2.0, then running rpm -e --noscripts package-1.0 during the package-2.0 %post scriptlet in the package-2.0 rpm.

It's messy... and a cludge, but if anyone else can come up with a better idea, please let me know.

I just went through the same thing myself. The standard way to deal with this is:

%preun

if [ $1 = 0 ]
then
....do uninstall stuff....
fi


That works because 'preun' is passed the number of versions of the package that are installed as its first argument ($1). If that number is 0 - no copies of the package are installed - then your uninstall stuff gets run.

Almost... except that doesnt work in this case unfortunately I cannot alter the current contents of Package-1.0, so placing the if condition in the %preun scriptlet is not possible.