rpm database crash

[javabiz]

I entered this on the software discussion as well, but in hopes that I could get more gurus involved--I'm entering it here too!

 

To begin with, I found a url with exactly the same problem I'm having with a tentative solution as far as Red Hat. Now I need to figure out if there's anything I can do with urpmi to get me out of my current predicament. Here's the scenario from the url and the Red Hat solution based on rpm

 

http://www.daylate.com/blog/archives/2003_02.html

 

Below is the jist of what it says:

 

RPM Database Crash

 

It was an interesting weekend. I planned on updating the RPM packages on the system over the weekend using Red-Carpet. However, it indicated there weren't any packages to update, which I knew was wrong. I did some checking and it appeared that my RPM database was corrupted. The solution to that seemed to be running rpm --rebuilddb. That rebuilds the database from the header files stored on the computer. Well...do you know what happens if your headers are also corrupted? You end up with a database of RPM's significantly smaller than you had before.

 

Fortunately for me RedHat outputs to a log file (/var/log/rpmpkgs) the current packages installed. After rebuilding my database I compared it with the log file. The rebuilt database was about 1/5 the size. What this means is my rebuilt database was missing 4/5 of the RPM's I had installed on my system. Everythings was still installed and ran fine but I knew I'd run into dependency problems and such if I ever wanted to update my packages or install a new package. So...basically I was left with the task of rebuilding my entire RPM database. Which, according to the rpmpkgs log file was around 800 packages. WHAT A MESS. However, after a few hours I came up with a pretty slick way to do it. I wrote a simple bash script to read through the rpmpkgs log file, download the package from the RedHat distribution and then add it to the database. Here's the script I used:

 

#!/bin/bash

exec < rpmpkgs.1

exec > zoutput.txt

 

while read line

do

wget ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/8.0/en...RPMS/$line

rpm -iv --nodeps --justdb --noscripts --force --notriggers $line

done

 

I used the rpmfind website instead of ftp.redhat.com cause it seemed to have more bandwidth. Anyway, I let this run over night. Then wrote another script to determine which packages it couldn't find. Basically it was just a script to figure out which files it couldn't find. I stored these in a file called znotfound.txt. Then I used that file as my input file (instead of rpmpkgs.1) and used the same script to scan the Red-Carpet cache of packages I had on my system (I installed all packages in the Red-Carpet cache first). Anyway, here's the script (basically just as simple as the previous):

 

#!/bin/bash

exec < znotfound.txt

exec > znotfound2.txt

 

while read line

do

if ! test -e $line

then

echo $line

fi

done

 

Basically all this does is check to see if the RPM file exists. After running these scripts I was left with 5 packages that were sill missing. NOT BAD! I can handle installing 5 packages manually, 800 is another thing. After all was said and done I ran rpm -Va to verify the packages installed. Everything looked good. No missing dependencies or conflicts. I think I'll start adding the RPM database directory (/var/lib/rpms) to my backup script.

 

ADDENDUM: I still haven't been able to figure out what caused the corruption in the first place, which has me concerned. We did have a couple power outages recently which sent the machine down hard so maybe that had something to do with it. I dunno...all the more reason to get a server I can colocate at a data center. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a colocation price that is as cheap as just hooking it up to my DSL line .

--------------------------------------------------------So back to my problem:

Does anyone out there know of a way to get Mandrake's rpm database back without having to do the script diddies above? Does the urpmi do essentially the same thing--and if so--what's the command to get my database back. I have the same problem as the person above--but with Mandrake and not Red Hat. For those who say--just change the ftp sites--that probably won't work.

Is there a simpler way than above to get the same results?

All gurus welcome!

 

This post has been edited by javabiz on Mar 10 2004, 02:27 AMrestoration.

Edited March 10, 2004 by javabiz

[Ixthusdan]

urpmi is the command line version of the Mandrake tools. A corruption as described is possibly caused by having a system that was not updated with the new tools, including urpmi.