Hello,

I'm having a problem with my filesystem that shows up as depency
conflicts (attached) when using YaST to install new software. The
strange thing is that the installation of my SuSe 9.3 Pro went ok and my
Linux box works quite fine (I wonder how it is possible...). I first
noticed this problem when tried to install imgSeek.

When tried to solve the problem by installing the filesystem again, the
filesystem package installation fails, following error appears.

Any ideas?



- - - - -
ERROR(InstTarget:E_RpmDB_subprocess_failed)
---
2005-06-12 21:18:39 qt3-devel-3.3.4-11.i586.rpm installed ok
2005-06-12 21:54:05 filesystem-9.3-2.i586.rpm install failed
rpm output:
error: unpacking of archive failed on file /var/mail: cpio: rename
failed - Is a directory

2005-06-12 21:54:47 ImageMagick-Magick++-6.1.8-6.i586.rpm installed ok
2005-06-25 19:40:53 filesystem-9.3-2.i586.rpm install failed
rpm output:
error: unpacking of archive failed on file /var/mail: cpio: rename
failed - Is a directory
- - - - -

#### YaST2 conflicts list - generated 2005-06-25 19:35:44 ####

aaa_base 9.3-9 conflict
Broken Dependencies of Installed:
aaa_base requires filesystem
Conflict Resolution:
( ) Downgrade aaa_base-9.3-9.2 to Version 9.3-9
( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
glibc 2.3.4-23 conflict
Broken Dependencies of Installed:
glibc requires filesystem
Conflict Resolution:
( ) Downgrade glibc-2.3.4-23.4 to Version 2.3.4-23
( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
gnome-vfs2 2.10.0-14 conflict
Broken Dependencies of Installed:
gnome-vfs2 requires filesystem
Conflict Resolution:
( ) Downgrade gnome-vfs2-2.10.0-14.2 to Version 2.10.0-14
( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
SuSEfirewall2 3.3-18 conflict
Broken Dependencies of Installed:
SuSEfirewall2 requires filesystem
Conflict Resolution:
( ) Downgrade SuSEfirewall2-3.3-18.2 to Version 3.3-18
( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies

#### YaST2 conflicts list END ###

"tasu" <tasu@suomi24.fi> wrote in message
news:60gve.115$lT.53@read3.inet.fi...
> Hello,
>
> I'm having a problem with my filesystem that shows up as depency
> conflicts (attached) when using YaST to install new software. The
> strange thing is that the installation of my SuSe 9.3 Pro went ok and my
> Linux box works quite fine (I wonder how it is possible...). I first
> noticed this problem when tried to install imgSeek.
>
> When tried to solve the problem by installing the filesystem again, the
> filesystem package installation fails, following error appears.
>
> Any ideas?

Yes. SuSE and its "YaST" package management have one chunk for system
software and its related dependencies, and another for update packages. They
are utterly distinct and have no way to manage them both simultaneously in
the same session, which created dependency hell, and has no way to automate
the installations or updates without a terminal session. They also blow away
newer versions of software for which you have dependencies if you use the
manual "yast -i packagename.rpm" tool, and ignore other dependencies. This
is.... butt stupid and makes auto-management incredibly painful and makes
mixing in other non-SuSE published RPM's even harder. The tool is *BAD*.

Throw Yast the futz *OUT* as much as possible and proceed to "fou4s", the
lovely and vastly superior script tool that solves all these problems for
you (except doing the script based commercial software installlers for
NVidia drivers and MS fonts, which SuSE's repositories always have out of
date and don't work well as installers anyway.

> - - - - -
> ERROR(InstTarget:E_RpmDB_subprocess_failed)
> ---
> 2005-06-12 21:18:39 qt3-devel-3.3.4-11.i586.rpm installed ok
> 2005-06-12 21:54:05 filesystem-9.3-2.i586.rpm install failed
> rpm output:
> error: unpacking of archive failed on file /var/mail: cpio: rename
> failed - Is a directory

??? OK, can you go to the download cache directory (/var/cache/yum or
something like that) and do a "rpm -Uvh --replacepkgs" of the specific
packages?

> 2005-06-12 21:54:47 ImageMagick-Magick++-6.1.8-6.i586.rpm installed ok
> 2005-06-25 19:40:53 filesystem-9.3-2.i586.rpm install failed
> rpm output:
> error: unpacking of archive failed on file /var/mail: cpio: rename
> failed - Is a directory
> - - - - -

I have no idea what is happening to /var/mail. Do you have a symlink or NFS
mount there or file or something other than a directory, or is it supposed
to be a symlink to /var/spool/mail? I don't remember for SuSe, but they do
tend to put unnecessary symlinks in odd places so that various tools can
operate without having to be reconfigured for local operation.

Don't get me going on what they did to chroot cages for bind and DHCP.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


> #### YaST2 conflicts list - generated 2005-06-25 19:35:44 ####
>
> aaa_base 9.3-9 conflict
> Broken Dependencies of Installed:
> aaa_base requires filesystem
> Conflict Resolution:
> ( ) Downgrade aaa_base-9.3-9.2 to Version 9.3-9
> ( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
> glibc 2.3.4-23 conflict
> Broken Dependencies of Installed:
> glibc requires filesystem
> Conflict Resolution:
> ( ) Downgrade glibc-2.3.4-23.4 to Version 2.3.4-23
> ( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
> gnome-vfs2 2.10.0-14 conflict
> Broken Dependencies of Installed:
> gnome-vfs2 requires filesystem
> Conflict Resolution:
> ( ) Downgrade gnome-vfs2-2.10.0-14.2 to Version 2.10.0-14
> ( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
> SuSEfirewall2 3.3-18 conflict
> Broken Dependencies of Installed:
> SuSEfirewall2 requires filesystem
> Conflict Resolution:
> ( ) Downgrade SuSEfirewall2-3.3-18.2 to Version 3.3-18
> ( ) Ignore Conflict and Risk System Inconsistencies
>
> #### YaST2 conflicts list END ###

Exit this tool, and use fou4s to point to your new update location and your
old OS location both at the same time. Really, it helps.

Or be prepared to revert things to install the packages, then as fast as
possible do an upgrade to acknowledge the existence of the neweer update
versions, and pray you don't blow away your configuration in the process.

In comp.os.linux.setup Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@comcast.net>:

> "tasu" <tasu@suomi24.fi> wrote in message
> news:60gve.115$lT.53@read3.inet.fi...

[ Problems updating/installing packages using suse yast ]

> Yes. SuSE and its "YaST" package management have one chunk for system
> software and its related dependencies, and another for update packages. They
[..]

> Throw Yast the futz *OUT* as much as possible and proceed to "fou4s", the
> lovely and vastly superior script tool that solves all these problems for
> you (except doing the script based commercial software installlers for
> NVidia drivers and MS fonts, which SuSE's repositories always have out of
> date and don't work well as installers anyway.

Second this one, in addition configure the system *not* to run
suseconfig (somewhere in /etc/sysconfig) and don't touch the yast
junk at all. Alternatively, simply switch to a distro not polluted
with click&droll admin tools that are prone to give you one
headache after another.

[..]

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 74: You're out of memory

Michael Heiming wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.setup Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@comcast.net>:
>
>
>>"tasu" <tasu@suomi24.fi> wrote in message
>>news:60gve.115$lT.53@read3.inet.fi...
>
>
> [ Problems updating/installing packages using suse yast ]
>
>
>>Yes. SuSE and its "YaST" package management have one chunk for system
>>software and its related dependencies, and another for update packages. They
>
> [..]
>
>
>>Throw Yast the futz *OUT* as much as possible and proceed to "fou4s", the
>>lovely and vastly superior script tool that solves all these problems for
>>you (except doing the script based commercial software installlers for
>>NVidia drivers and MS fonts, which SuSE's repositories always have out of
>>date and don't work well as installers anyway.
>
>
> Second this one, in addition configure the system *not* to run
> suseconfig (somewhere in /etc/sysconfig) and don't touch the yast
> junk at all. Alternatively, simply switch to a distro not polluted
> with click&droll admin tools that are prone to give you one
> headache after another.
>
> [..]
>


I switched to fou4s and ... love at first sight! Very nice.

Not going to switch distro, at least not now (getting some 'generic'
experience first, maybe switching to Debian some day). But I'll keep in
mind your advice to be aware of those so called 'tools'.

Ok, back to the filesystem conflict problem. I somehow managed to solve
it (no depency conflicts exist), but I'm not sure how. How could I be
100% sure; any way to check it?

Thank you very much for your advice.

tasu

> Ok, back to the filesystem conflict problem. I somehow managed to solve
> it (no depency conflicts exist), but I'm not sure how. How could I be 100%
> sure; any way to check it?
>
> Thank you very much for your advice.

No sweat. Grab *all* the installed RPM's into a directory, all at once or
one at a time, and do a "rpm -Uh $name --dry-run --replacepkgs" with them to
see if there are conflicts.

RedHat has a little cron job called /etc/cron.daily/rpm that puts a list of
all your installed packages, with full package names, in /var/log/rpm. I
highly recommend the widget for use elsewhere for exactly this sort of
situation.