Troubleshooting RPM Installation Issues

When you install software on Linux hosts, be aware of various known issues with different versions of RPM.

MD5 checksum failure

Under some circumstances, RPM cannot verify the MD5 checksum. In these cases RPM fails because it cannot unpack the product archive. Re-enter the command with the --nomd5 option. For example, for Symphony DE:
rpm -ivh ‑‑dbpath /usr/soam/db ‑‑prefix /usr/soam symphonyDE‑linux2.6‑glibc2.3-x86-4.0.0-build_number.rpm ‑‑nomd5

Cannot install as non-root

RPM versions 4.3.x do not support non-root installations.

To work around this problem, let the system administrator run "chmod -R a+rwx /var/lock/rpm" on the host.

Unpacking archive failed

For RPM 4.3.3_11, you may see the message "unpacking of archive failed: cpio: lsetfilecon.".

To work around this problem, install with the RPM option "--nocontexts" .

RPM database directory must exist and the ‑‑prefix option does not work

For RPM 4.3.3_11, 4.2, and 4.1, the RPM database directory, as --dbpath specifies, must exist on the local disk before installing. Also, these RPM versions do not support the rpm --prefix option. RPM uses the RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX to determine the installation directory. To install in a different directory, set RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX so that RPM can install the product to the specified destination directory.

For example, to install Symphony DE to /opt/symphonyDE/DE40:
mkdir /opt/symphonyDE/DE40/db
setenv RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX /opt/symphonyDE/DE40
rpm -ivh --dbpath /usr/share/soam/db symphonyDE-linux2.6-glibc2.3-x86-4.0.0-build_number.rpm

RPM lock error during installation

For RPM 4.2, log on as root and delete all files in the directory /var/lock/rpm

Cannot get shared lock

RPM 4.1.1 cannot install on a Quadrics Resource Management System (RMS) kernel. RPM cannot get a shared lock in this environment, so it cannot update the RMS data base directory.

Restart your system under a different kernel to install the product. After installing, you can restart the RMS kernel.

Custom database directory

For RPM version 3.0.6, the RPM database directory you specify with the --dbpath option must exist on the local disk before installing. You must also specify the --nodeps option

For example, to install Symphony DE on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
mkdir /opt/symphonyDE/DE40/db
setenv RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX /opt/symphonyDE/DE40
ln -s ./opt/symphonyDE/DE40 /soam 
rpm -iv --dbpath /opt/symphonyDE/DE40/db --prefix /soam symphonyDE-linux2.6-glibc2.3-x86-4.0.0-build_number.rpm --nodeps

If you install the product using the customized dbpath, use the same dbpath when you uninstall the product.

Upgrade fails to remove old version from RPM database

For RPM versions 4.2, 4.1.1, and 4.0.3, during upgrade, the installer is not able to remove the previous version of EGO from the RPM database. For RPM version 4.2, the installer reports success at this step, for other versions it shows an error message. The change to the RPM database is only done to prevent accidental uninstallation, but for these versions of RPM, this change is not possible.

This problem is not serious because it does not affect the operation of the cluster, but you must never uninstall the previous version of Platform EGO. The upgraded cluster uses many files and components from the original installation, and cannot work if you uninstall the original software.

Non-root installation

In Suse 9, the default RPM version is 4.1.1. If root has installed Symphony DE, a non-root user cannot install the same Symphony DE version in a different location.