I ran into a problem recently where I had installed the openpkg version of
postfix on a SuSE 8.1 system, and removed the system's postfix RPM which
required ``--force --nodeps'' to ignore other dependencies. Everything
worked fine until I used the SuSE system update function which promptly
reinstalled postfix to ``fix'' the unsatisfied dependencies.
I think the solution to this may well be to create a minimal RPM,
openpkg-postfix, to install with /bin/rpm on the system which would do
several things:
1. Have a ``Provides: smtp_daemon'' which seems to be the thing that's
causing postfix to be reloaded.
2. Have an ``Obsoletes: postfix'' which should cause the system postfix
to be removed automatically.
3. Make the appropriate symlinks, /usr/sbin/sendmail, /usr/lib/sendmail,
etc. so that programs that use these will find them in all the right
places.
This binary RPM could be included as part of the openpkg RPM, and installed
in the ``%pre'' processing to remove the system package. The difficult
part of this from the openpkg perspective would be finding some way to
handle a variety of systems (similar to the problem when bootstrapping to
figure out where programs start). The SPEC file for this will be very
small, basically an ``%install'' section that makes the appropriate
symlinks, the necessary ``Provides:'' and ``Obsoletes:'' sections, and the
``%files'' list with the symlinks.
While violating the openpkg principle of making changes to the host system,
it may solve two problems, (a) the host system changing the openpkg package
it doesn't know about, and (b) provide a clean way of handling links in the
hosts's directory space. Appropriate comments in the system's
openpkg-%{name} package could refer to the specific openpkg instance that
warrants the change.
I think that the mail transport agent is one of the few things that are so
thoroughly embedded in a Unix system that special handling may well be
required. Apache may well be another package with similar requirements,
particularly if the host uses their apache installation to handle things
like on-line help.
Comments? Suggestions?
Bill
--
INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
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``Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do
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