Paul Johnson wrote:
> I thought the RPM system would not allow two packages to claim a single file.
>
> How does that work?
RPM's been extended so it does. It's been extended so that it
understands the architecture to be a part of the RPM "name", it will
allow two packages to own the same file as long as they're otherwise
identical (time, size, checksum), and understands that if a 32 bit
package and a 64 bit package want to put files with the same name in
/usr/bin, /sbin, or similar places (not /lib or /usr/lib) then the 64
bit package takes precedence.
There is a long-standing bug with RPM -- if you have both the 64 bit and
32 bit versions of a package installed, and remove one of them, rpm will
remove some of the shared files when it shouldn't (often documentation).
> And why do some rpm repositories install both i386 and x86_64 packages
> (Fedora core), while others seem not to (livna).
It depends on repository policy as to what they offer.
Note that you can always yum install foo.x86_64 to specify which
architecture you want.
> Is there a document describing the administrative differences in
> x86_64 systems for people who are familiar with Linux on i386??
There really are very few differences apart from multilib and
compatibility with closed-source plugins. I think you've already
encountered most of it.
You might want to drop the following line into ~/.rpmmacros:
%_query_all_fmt %%{name}-%%{version}-%%{release}.%%{arch}
(maybe not if you've got existing scripts that depend on rpm). That will
extend rpm's output to show the architecture as well, which can be
useful.
Also note that RPM seems rather too happy to create .rpmnew files when
updating when the file hasn't changed (because it thinks the time-stamp
has changed, because it's getting confused between two packages owning
the same file).
Red Hat has stated that they are going to pay more attention to rpm in
the future, so hopefully these bugs should be fixed.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail: james@ | [Alan] finally installed his cuckoo clock on the wall.
aprilcottage.co.uk | For some reason this involved falling over in the dark in
| the garden, but I haven't dared ask about that yet. I
| don't -think- he was trying to catch a cuckoo to put
| inside it, but you never know. -- Telsa Gwynne's Diary
