On Jun 10, 2011, at 4:39 PM, Mark Hatle wrote: > I've been trying to reconcile the behavior between rpm and deb packages in the > way their directories are handled. > > In rpm, we can set the directories to "own" in various ways. If there is a > conflict between two packages owning the same directory -- first-in wins and > that's where the permissions/owner/group are selected. (correct me if I'm > wrong) >
That's likely (but based on ancient memories of a performance speed-up
to avoid creating already existent directories ... not that mkdir is slow, just
that is what was originally implemented like 1997).
But that explains first rather than last. I could look at the code: so can you
rpm -Uvv --fsmdebug *.rpm
should spew every system call performed.
> In deb, directories are not owned by any package, they're just created as an
> artifact of the package installation. All of the packages in the system are
> expected to have directories with the same permissions, owners, group or the
> package is broken. I assume this means a similar first-in wins strategy as
> well.
>
> Is there a way in RPM to change this strategy to create a true conflict
> (install
> failure) to identify these situations?
>
There's no configurable way ... but changing opens a walloping amount
of pain because RPM will *again* have to justify its reliability if
change occurs.
I plain and simply don't give a hoot unless a sound
engineering reason is given for the change.
Change for the sake of change isn't a sound reason, nor is consistency with
the Debian Borg mind meld, nor is introducing Yet Another Way That RPM
Doesn't Install Anything because of lack of vendor QA.
> Also, what is the impact to RPM if a lot of packages all own the same
> directories (such as /bin, /lib, /usr, etc..)? [or alternatively have no
> packages own the directories and fix the owner/group/mode with some type of
> scripting]
Lemme answer a question with a question:
Why are you asking? Are you seeing "impact" or just enquiring?
Owning all directories in every package so that
rpm -qa | wc -l
and
rpm -qf / | wc -l
are identical is what I think should be done on even days of the month.
On odd days of the month, I tend towards the schizoid alterantive POV, that
no directory should be in "packages".
And on leap days I use dpkg ...
>
> Any help understanding RPM's behavior in these conditions performance or
> otherwise will help me figure out how to reconcile the behaviors.. thanks!
>
Everything that rpm does while installing is displayable with
rpm -Uvv --fsmdebug *.rpm
Any "quirks" aren't from the state machine, but rather from foolish
fiddle ups for "unowned directory" behavior w SELinux and other insanities.
73 de Jeff
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