Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 11-05-2007, Installation Manual

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• If a configuration file was changed by the system administrator before the update,
rpm
saves the changed file with the extension
.rpmorig
or
.rpmsave
(backup
file) and installs the version from the new package, but only if the originally installed
file and the newer version are different. If this is the case, compare the backup file
(
.rpmorig
or
.rpmsave
) with the newly installed file and make your changes
again in the new file. Afterwards, be sure to delete all
.rpmorig
and
.rpmsave
files to avoid problems with future updates.
•
.rpmnew
files appear if the configuration file already exists and if the
noreplace
label was specified in the
.spec
file.
Following an update,
.rpmsave
and
.rpmnew
files should be removed after compar-
ing them, so they do not obstruct future updates. The
.rpmorig
extension is assigned
if the file has not previously been recognized by the RPM database.
Otherwise,
.rpmsave
is used. In other words,
.rpmorig
results from updating from
a foreign format to RPM.
.rpmsave
results from updating from an older RPM to a
newer RPM.
.rpmnew
does not disclose any information as to whether the system
administrator has made any changes to the configuration file. A list of these files is
available in
/var/adm/rpmconfigcheck
. Some configuration files (like
/etc/
httpd/httpd.conf
) are not overwritten to allow continued operation.
The
-U
switch is not just an equivalent to uninstalling with the
-e
option and installing
with the
-i
option. Use
-U
whenever possible.
To remove a package, enter
rpm -e package
.
rpm
only deletes the package if there
are no unresolved dependencies. It is theoretically impossible to delete Tcl/Tk, for ex-
ample, as long as another application requires it. Even in this case, RPM calls for assis-
tance from the database. If such a deletion is—for whatever reason and under unusual
circumstances—impossible, even if no additional dependencies exist, it may be helpful
to rebuild the RPM database using the option
--rebuilddb
.
15.3 RPM and Patches
To guarantee the operational security of a system, update packages must be installed
in the system from time to time. Previously, a bug in a package could only be eliminated
by replacing the entire package. Large packages with bugs in small files could easily
RPM—the Package Manager 297