Herbert Poetzl wrote:

On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 02:19:32PM +0100, Lars Braeuer wrote:

>does anyone have a brief explanation of how rpm is working when giving
>it a list of rpms (like in the vserver redhat minimum installation
>script). I'm currently adapting the redhat installation script to work
>with suse (7.3/8.0), it almost works but there's still a problem that
>drives me crazy. I'm not used to rpm, I usually compile all my
>applications by hand, but for an automated vserver creation rpm is much
>easier. ;)
>
>I checked the rpm manpages several times and the only thing I found, is
>that rpm tries to sort the packages, so that all dependencies are
>fullfilled.
>
>when running the install script with a minium rpm list, it almost
>installs all packages. but one of the most important packages (aaa_base)
>containing a basic passwd and group file, is not installed. I kind of
>found a workaround by copying the passwd and group file from the
>installation cd, but there are more files in the aaa_base rpm that are
>needed.


the aaa_base or similar "base" packages on rpm based
distributions are usually some kind of "fake" package
which gets installed after the "base" installation
required to get rpm, etc working. so these packages
usually list a number of files, but do not contain
any of those files (they usually can be found on the
first installation CD in a directory named "*base*" ...
the installation scripts simply copy the files to the
destination directory/medium and then install the
selected packages including the fake aaa_base package.

Installing the aaa_base package right after all the other packages are installed works fine. But the rpms initially installed seem to require those files included there.

So do you mean that it's the right approach to copy a set of base files (passwd/group/shadow) from the installation cd before running the base installation, so that everyhting is there for a "base" installation? and afterwards just install the aaa_base package?

If the aaa_base rpm is just a fake, I wonder why the description says "This package installs several important configuration files. "

On a redhat vserver installation, which rpm is responsible for the passwd and group files?

thanks for your help.

lars

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