Re: [owl-users] CentOS packages

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 06:54:02PM +0400, croco_at_private wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 04:19:43AM +0400, Solar Designer wrote:
> > 
> > To find out where /etc/mime.types comes from on CentOS, download their
> > rpmdb-CentOS package (such as rpmdb-CentOS-4.8-0.20090804.i386.rpm),
> > install it, then issue:
> > 
> > bash-3.1# rpm --dbpath /usr/lib/rpmdb/i386-redhat-linux/CentOS -qf /etc/mime.types
> > mailcap-2.1.17-1
> > 
> > I just did the above on a chroot'ed test install of Owl-current, and it
> > worked just fine as you can see.  Yes, you have to know about their
> > rpmdb package, but other package names you can infer using that one.
> > Feel free to add info on the rpmdb package to our wiki page if you feel
> > that it is of sufficient relevance.
> 
> I've just updated the wiki page adding the tip with a couple of examples.

Thank you!  I've just made further edits to the wiki page, including to
your addition re: rpmdb-CentOS.  I've also added:

"... it is debatable whether use of pre-existing packages contributed by
Owl users or taken from or intended for another distribution is actually
a better thing to do (more correct, easier, quicker - with all of these
being questionable) than doing your own builds or not.  Please use your
own judgment on a case-by-case basis."

to the introduction section, and I added a section on rebuilding source
packages (.src.rpm).  For those reading this message out of context, we
are talking about:

http://openwall.info/wiki/Owl/packages

> However, I'm not that familiar with rpm, so may be I'm doing something
> wrong, but I see no way to simply ask rpm about what packages should be
> downloaded and installed if I simply want a particular package to install.
> I now know how to solve the particular case of the puzzle (that is, when
> there's a dependency on a file and I don't know from which package does it
> come); however, I still see no much use of, e.g., rpm -qR (or rpm -qRp)
> even with the help of the database, as rpm only shows a long-long list of
> files, libs or whatever, most of them are already in the system, some of
> them can be acquired from other packages but their names aren't shown.  May
> be there's another useful option of RPM which I simply don't see?

As far as I'm aware, RPM itself does not offer an option to resolve
dependency chains and print a complete set of packages to download and
install all at once.  This is what tools such as yum do (and more).
Someone more familiar with this topic might provide a better response.

As to your complaint that "their names aren't shown", you can find the
package names out using "-qf" on the filenames (when filenames instead
of package names are shown as dependencies).  It's just that you have to
make multiple RPM database queries to resolve everything to package
names.  Yes, for long dependency chains this is problematic, but for a
package with a few dependencies this works just fine.

Alexander

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