RPM problem

[Kevin Buettner]

On Apr 30, 12:02am, arson smith wrote:

> This is a very strange one. I have been trying to upgrade via rpm a redhat 
> system 6.0 (with many upgrades) to xfree40.  I am useing the rawhide rpms 
> from redhat for this and was trying for quite some time.  Two diffrent 
> versions of the same rpm kept giveing me this same error:
> 
> XFree86                     ###################unpacking of archive failed 
> on file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults: cpio: unlink failed - Bad file 
> descriptor
> 
> I then grabed redhat 6.2 and installed it from scratch.  by this time there 
> was a new version of XFree86 rpm and it is still giveing me this same 
> problem.  I am going to see if I can grab the .src.rpm and do it from there 
> but it seems that this cant be just me having this problem and if it is I 
> would like to know why.  two completely diffrent systems and 3 diffrent 
> versions of the same rpm.

Is it really three different versions of the same RPM?  Or are you
trying to install the same RPM obtained from three different sources
(mirrors) ?

In any event, the error message suggests that cpio is attempting
to unlink() /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults.  If that is indeed the
case, it definitely won't work since app-defaults is a directory,
not a regular file.  (One calls rmdir() to remove an empty directory.)

You might try working around this problem by becoming root and then
doing the following:

    cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11; mv app-defaults app-defaults-sav

With no app-defaults directory in place, you might get somewhat
further along.

Now back to my original question.  If you're really trying three
different RPMS, then it seems unlikely that all three would contain
the same error.  OTOH, if you've simply obtained the same RPM from
three different mirrors, it seems quite possible that there could
be an error in the RPM.  (It's quite easy to put together an RPM
that won't install properly - I speak from experience.)

Kevin