[ILUG] apt-get dist-upgrade kills FC3 server

[Paul Jakma]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Conor Daly wrote:

> Last I looked, yum used rpm's --force switch which was considered a 
> bad thing.  Apt doesn't do such a thing so I use apt.  Maybe yum 
> has been fixed since...

I think I'm the one who complained about this and accused yum of 
using some equivalent of --force and hence clobbering files if you 
installed the same RPM for multiple arches.

Turns out yum /does/ not do any such thing, it's actually /rpmlib/ 
which simply ignores the case where an RPM would install an existing 
file provided it is the same rpm but for a different arch.

Yum relies on rpmlib to detect whether a proposed upgrade is allowed 
or not. It does a 'fake' upgrade first (uses this to resolve 
dependencies too - rather than understand the dependencies - weird).

Apt OTOH does not rely on rpmlib to detect file-clobbering. Hence, 
apt is (imho) safer.

So, turns not it wasn't yum's fault at all. Just apt being much safer 
because it does it's own redundant checking independent of rpmlib, 
before ever trying an upgrade.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.