I develop a software which is distributed and installed via rpm. During install, I copy some binaries to a destination directory.
When performing rpm upgrade, I'd like the old binaries not to be deleted, and that the new ones will be added as is.
Is there an rpm built-in way to do so? I'd really like to avoid scripting in order to resolve that...
EDIT:
The above binaries were listed in #files section.
If you are manually copying the files to some directory (in %post for example) then yum/rpm doesn't know anything about them and can't remove them.
If you have them listed in the %files section (i.e. copying them to the right place under buildroot during `%install) then no, I do not believe you can have rpm leave files not listed by the new package on the system after upgrading to a newer version of the package which does not contain those files.
It might be possible to play with marking them as %config files and then "modifying" them so that rpm won't remove them but it might still rename them and I don't know if this will actually work.
Related
Currently I am trying to install a rpm secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm and i am
unable to install it as we already have secured_soft_1.3.0 installed.
Requirement is that we need to have both the versions installed.
Complexities :
These package inturn have dependent rpm's (lot of them ) and all these
interdependent rpm's also have versions
ex: secured_soft_1.3.0 works only with packages which are of version 1.3,
and secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm work only with dependecies of version 2.0 only.
So all these dependencies also need to be reinstalled and even these
dependenies should be parallely installed, without deleting old.
Finally , both these versions contain shared libraries and these shared
lib's do not have version numbers in their name.
#rpm -ivh secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
init-class >= 1.4.17.1-1 is needed by secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm
init-connection-interface >= 2.0.11.0 is needed by secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm
init-logger >= 2.0.11.0 is needed by secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm
init-security >= 2.0.11.0 is needed by secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm
As i have specified we already have secured_soft_1.3.0.rpm installed and
above dependencies are also available but of different version.
So we need the to install above dependencies and also need the old version's
of dependencies for the old rpm's to work
ex : secured_soft_2.0.0.rpm has libArt.so libSec.so and so on
which are copied to /usr/lib
Similarly secured_soft_1.3.0.rpm also has libArt.so libSec.so and so on
which are already available in /usr/lib
I tried to rename the so's but still iam not able to install.
Is it possible to change the location for these so's and get the things done
Is there any way we can do it.
At the moment, iam stuck here and would need advice on this
Appreciate any help on this.
Since the programs use the same filenames, and you need to put them on the same machine, you might be able to move the older version to another directory tree and make it work there.
You can do this with many applications which do not have compiled-in pathnames.
For instance,
install the older version (this sounds like where you are starting from)
use rpm -ql for each of the packages containing unversioned executables, libraries and associated files.
use tar to capture an archive of those files, relative to /usr (but omitting directories not owned by the packages).
create a new directory, e.g., /usr/local/myapp and untar the older version there.
update configuration files in the new location as needed
For applications such as this, I would run in a script that updates PATH (and perhaps sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH) to force the program to run from the new location. You can verify if this works using tools such as strace and lsof, i.e., by looking for the files that the program opens.
Once you have the older version working properly in the new location, you can uninstall its rpms and install the new version of the application.
Caveat: If the newer package is copied from a newer version of the operating system, however, the task is likely to be beyond your ability, whether or not you choose the alternative approach of recompiling the newer packages to fit on the existing system.
Building new/custom packages is one route to recompiling the newer version. If you have the source-RPMs for each part, that is a starting point:
extract the files from the source-RPM, e.g., using a script such as unrpm (see for example HowTo: Extract an RPM Package Files Without Installing It), and
copy those extracted files to their as-expected locations in your build-tree, e.g., $HOME/rpmbuild/SOURCES and $HOME/rpmbuild/SPECS
modify the spec-file to use the alternative location
build the new/modified package using the modified spec-file.
No, out of the box, you cannot.
I'd highly recommend looking into Docker, where you can throw each one into their own container and let them take care of all their dependency problems.
I wonder, if there is a way to do the following:
I have rpmA-v1 installed on the system. It has a lot of config files which user can edit for their purposes. Then, I want to install new version of rpmA, say, rpmA-v2 and before installing it I want to back up those config files, which were edited, not to edit config files one more time.
Is there any way to know which files were edited in such a situation?
If you are talking about config files related to given package, rpm already has pretty robust mechanism for this known as .rpmnew/.rpmsave.
If package is being upgraded, at the discretion of package creator/maintainer there are 2 possible actions that may be taken by rpm:
Old config is preserved intact say at /etc/myprog/config, and new one is installed right next to it as /etc/myprog/config.rpmnew. Presence of *.rpmnew file typically means that old config was NOT edited.
Old config is renamed to /etc/myprog/config.rpmsave, and new one is installed as/etc/myprog/config (replacing old one). New config may be completely fresh (vanilla) or it may incorporate settings inherited from old, .rpmsave'd version. Presence of *.rpmsave files is pretty robust sign that config files were actually edited by rpm.
Typically, after upgrading of one or more packages (or the whole system) it is recommended to search for all .rpmnew/.rpmsave files using command like
find /etc -name "*.rpmsave" -or -name "*.rpmnew"
and carefuly inspect all configs against their .rpmnew/.rpmsave versions (if they are around) to make sure that settings are correct. You can use diff -u to see text diffs or meld for graphical diff/merge.
#mvp has provided a good way to determine changed config files - provided they are marked as such.
If they aren't, you can/should verify the installed package with rpm -V packagename in order to display any changed files.
Is it possible to keep RPM content in the filesystem after the uninstallation ?
Basically, I don't want to erase the files generated by the RPM when someone runs rpm -e, but still remove the package from the list of installed RPMs. I want to uninstall my application manually from the server and I cannot find a way to do so.
Thanks in advance.
Specfile creation
From this perspective as a package creator, you can flag files as configurations. John Warbrick at Cambridge Uni has a good rundown of the different file markings you can use in an RPM specfile and how they behave during upgrade.
Files marked %config, if changed, are:
left behind on uninstall but renamed with an .rpmsave extension
untouched on update or reinstall, but the payload copy is installed with an .rpmnew extension
Warbrick does not deal with straight package removal: if a file marked %config is unchanged, erasing the package will remove the file. (Bear in mind that, according to RPM scriptlet ordering, RPM update or reinstall begins with erasing the old package, before the new files are lain down. I.e., the old unchanged config is replaced with the new config.)
It would be an abuse of RPM file classification to mark something a %config that is not really a config. This is important because sysadmins need to be able to trust the package payload. Plus, you probably don't want such a file to be renamed with an extension.
Your best hope then is to create the file during RPM %post. Files copied to the filesystem in %install are checked against the %files list and stored in the RPM database, but files created in %post are not. Again, this an abuse of the RPM spec file format, but if you mention it in the %description and any other documentation, but especially if it's logically expected behavior in the context of your package, you'll maybe get some sympathy.
Existing packages
For sysadmins wanting to remove a package without removing its payload, you use rpm --justdb. First, check the file list:
# rpm -ql $PACKAGE | tee $PACKAGE.payload
[rpm returns list of files, tee saves it in the file $PACKAGE.payload]
# rpm -e --justdb $PACKAGE
(At this stage, you may get a complaint about deps, so repeat with --nodeps if you must.)
And finally, check that the package is gone, but payload is still there:
# rpm -q $PACKAGE
package $PACKAGE is not installed
# ls -l $(<$PACKAGE.payload)
[ls queries list of files saved in $PACKAGE.payload]
(Or for a more reliable ls if filenames contain spaces, which would be unconscionable in RPM.)
# cat $PACKAGE.payload|xargs -d '\n' ls -l
Other observations
Note that for a package created using the method outlined at the top of my answer, attempting to list the files it owns with rpm -ql $PACKAGE will not show those persistent files. Another consequence of throwing down files during %post is that another package which "owns" those files could overwrite them unexpectedly - they're not listed in the RPM database, so they're not protected.
The two methods I've outlined break Best Practices for both RPM package creation and sysadmin. Please be very careful how you use this dangerous "little bit of knowledge". Maybe there's something else you could do to create the desired situation.
(Finally, I know this is a question from four year back. It wasn't answered. It needed answering. Cheers.)
rpm -e --repackage package_name will drop a re-installable copy in /var/spool/repackage. You can extract from that rpm using rpm2cpio if you need those files back individually.
One of the advantages of RPMS is exactly that: you can uninstall (remove)
all the files easily.
If you want to install the files provided by an RPM manually,
simply unpack the RPM as root, with:
cd / &&
rpm2cpio *.rpm | cpio -idmv
It's not a good idea, but you can unpack RPMS like that elsewhere (e.g. under ${HOME}),
and that's very useful. You may need to adjust some environment variables though.
You don't pollute the RPM database but still use the contents of an RPM.
Of course your application may get broken by system updates,
because it is not protected by dependencies.
Anyway this is how you "install" and RPM if you are not root.
Removal is also easy (if installation path chosen suitably).
I have a debian package that I built that contains a tar ball of the files, a control file, and a postinst file. Its built using dpkg-deb and it installs properly using dpkg.
The modification I would like to make is to have the installation directory of the files be determined at runtime based on an environment variable that will be set when dpkg -i is run on the deb file. I echo out the environment variable in the postinst script and I can see that its set properly.
My questions:
1) Is it possible to dynamically determine the installation directory at runtime?
2) If its possible how would I go about this? I have read about the rules file and the mypackage.install files but I don't know if either of these would allow me to accomplish this.
I could hack it by copying the files to the target location in the posinst script but I would prefer to do it the right way if possible.
Thanks in advance!
So this is what I found out about this problem over the past couple of weeks.
With prepackaged binaries you can't build a debian package with a destination directory dynamicall determined at runtime. I believe that this might be possible if installing a package that is built from source where you can set the install directory using configure. But in this case since these are embedded Ubuntu machines they don't have make so I didn't pursue such an option. I did work out a non traditional method (hack) for installing that did work. Since debian packages simply contain a tar ball relative to / simply build your package relative to a directory under /tmp. In the postinst script you can then determine where to copy the files from the archive into a permanent location.
I expected that after rebooting and the automatic deletion of the subdirectory under /tmp that dpkg might not know that the file package existed. This wasn't a problem. When I ran 'dpkg -l myapp' it showed as still installed. Updating the package using dpkg/apt-get also worked without a hitch.
What I did find is that if you attempted to remove the package using 'dpkg -r myapp' that dpkg would try and remove /tmp which wasn't good. However /tmp isn't easily removed so it never succeeded. Plus in our situation we never remove packages but instead simply upgrade them.
I eventually had to abandon the universal package due to code differences in the sources resulting in having to recompile per platform but I would have left it this way and it did work.
I tried using --instdir to change the install directory of the package and it does relocate the files but dpkg fails since the dpkg file can't be found relative to the new instdir. Using --instdir is sort of like a chroot. I also tried --admindir and --root in various combinations to see if I could use the dpkg system relative to / but install relocate the files but they didn't work. I guess rpm has a relocate option that works but not Ubuntu.
You can also write a script that runs dpkg-deb with a different environment for 6 times, generating 6 different packages. When you make a modification, you simply have to run your script, and all 6 packages gets generated and you can install them on your machines avoiding postinst hacking!
Why not install to a standard location, and simply use a postinst script to create symbolic links to the desired location? This is much cleaner, and shouldn't break anything in dpk -I.
I'm looking into trying to find an easy way to manage packages compiled from source so that when it comes time to upgrade, I'm not in a huge mess trying to uninstall/install the new package.
I found a utility called CheckInstall, but it seems to be quite old, and I was wondering if this a reliable solution before I begin using it?
http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/
Also would simply likely to know any other methods/utilities that you use to handle these installations from source?
Whatever you do, make sure that you eventually go through your distribution's package management system (e.g. rpm for Fedora/Mandriva/RH/SuSE, dpkg for Debian/Ubuntu etc). Otherwise your package manager will not know anything about the packages you installed by hand and you will have unsatisfied dependencies at best, or the mother of all messes at worst.
If you don't have a package manager, then get one and stick with it!
I would suggest that you learn to make your own packages. You can start by having a look at the source packages of your distribution. In fact, if all you want to do is upgrade to version 1.2.3 of MyPackage, your distribution's source package for 1.2.2 can usually be adapted with a simple version change (unless there are patches, but that's another story...).
Unless you want distribution-quality packages (e.g. split library/application/debugging packages, multiple-architecture support etc) it is usually easy to convert your typical configure & make & make install scenario into a proper source package. If you can convince your package to install into a directory rather than /, you are usually done.
As for checkinstall, I have used it in the past, and it worked for a couple of simple packages, but I did not like the fact that it actually let the package install itself onto my system before creating the rpm/deb package. It just tracked which files got installed so that it would package them, which did not protect against unwelcome changes. Oh, and it needed root prilileges to work, which is another main sticking point for me. And lets not go into what happens with statically linked core utilities...
Most tools of the kind seem to work that way, so I simply learnt to build my own packages The Right Way (TM) and let checkinstall and friends mess around elsewhere. If you are still interested, however, there is a list of similar programs here:
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/automating-destdir.html
PS: BTW checkinstall was updated at the end of 2009, which probably means that it's still adequately current.
EDIT:
In my opinion, the easiest way to perform an upgrade to the latest version of a package if it is not readily available in a repository is to alter the source package of the latest version in your distribution. E.g. for Centos the source packages for the latest version are here:
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/os/SRPMS/
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/updates/SRPMS/
...
If you want to upgrade e.g. php, you get the latest SRPM for your distrbution e.g. php-5.1.6-27.el5.src.rpm. Then you do:
rpm -hiv php-5.1.6-27.el5.src.rpm
which installs the source package (just the sources - it does not compile anything). Then you go to the rpm build directory (on my mandriva system its /usr/src/rpm), you copy the latest php source tarball to the SOURCES subdirectory and you make sure it's compressed in the same way as the tarball that just got installed there. Afterwards you edit the php.spec file in the SPECS directory to change the package version and build the binary package with something like:
rpmbuild -ba php.spec
In many cases that's all it will take for a new package. In others things might get a bit more complicated - if there are patches or if there are some major changes in the package you might have to do more.
I suggest you read up on the rpm and rpmbuild commands (their manpages are quite good, in a bit extensive) and check up the documentation on writing spec files. Even if you decide to rely on official backport repositories, it is useful to know how to build your own packages. See also:
http://www.rpm.org/wiki/Docs
EDIT 2:
If you are already installing packages from source, using rpm will actually simplify the building process in the long term, apart from maintaining the integrity of your system. The reason for this is that you won't have to remember the quirks of each package on your own ("oooh, right, now I remember, foo needs me to add -lbar to its CFLAGS"), as the build process will be in the .spec file, which you could imagine as a somewhat structured build script.
As far as upgrading goes, if you already have a .spec file for a previous version of the package, there are two main issues that you may encounter, but both exist whether you use rpm to build your package or not:
A patch that was applied to the previous version by the distribution does not apply any more. In many cases the patch has already been applied to the upstream package, so you can simply drop it. In others you may have to edit it - or I suppose if you deem it unimportant you can drop it too.
The package changed in some major way which affected e.g. the layout of the files it installs. You do read the release notes notes for each new version, don't you?
Other than these two issues, upgrading often boils down to just changing a version number in the spec file and running rpmbuild - even easier than installing from a tarball.
I would suggest that you have a look at the tutorials or at the source package for some simple piece of software such as:
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/os/SRPMS/ipv6calc-0.61-1.src.rpm
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/os/SRPMS/libevent-1.4.13-1.src.rpm
If you have experience in buildling packages from a tarball, using rpm to build software is not much of a leap really. It will never be as simple as installing a premade binary package, however.
I use checkinstall on Debian. It should not be so different on CentOS. I use it like that:
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall make install # fakeroot in place of sudo works usally for more security
# install the package generated