How to implement and check a rpm for an 'rpmlib' capability

[Panu Matilainen]

On 01/29/2013 04:04 PM, Thierry Parmentelat wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'm facing issues with rpm in a rather convoluted scenario, where a fedora14 physical box spins off virtual machines, and in the mix invokes rpm/yum to build guest images
>
> Long story short, for guests under fedora 17 and 18, I run into this
> ERROR You need to update rpm to handle:
> rpmlib(X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir) is needed by filesystem-3.1-2.fc18.x86_64
> rpmlib(X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir) is needed by setup-2.8.57-1.fc18.noarch
>
> As far as I understand fedora has added this as a precaution for upgrades across the f16/f17 barrier and I really do not plan on doing any of this, so using an rpm binary/package that fakes this 'X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir' thing would be enough for my needs at first sight
>
> Trying to work around that, I made an attempt to rebuild f18's rpm under f14; which was easy enough; at first sight it seemed to have the proper f18 patch so I was optimistic :)
>
> -----
> Unfortunately using this new rpm did not solve the issue, and when trying to check that the new rpm indeed had the required capability - or whatever the proper name is here, I mean 'X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir' - I realized that even with the native f18 rpm I was not able to spot that feature:
>
> # rpm -qp rpm-4.10.2-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm --provides
> warning: rpm-4.10.2-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID de7f38bd: NOKEY
> config(rpm) = 4.10.2-1.fc18
> rpm = 4.10.2-1.fc18
> rpm(x86-64) = 4.10.2-1.fc18
>
>
> mmh, my first thought had been this would show up in there, but obviously, it's not, even with the stock f18 rpm
> so digging further I found references here and there to --showrc; I',m not sure that I captured that one, but here's what I get
>
> root at mirror /mirror/fedora/updates/18/x86_64 # rpm -qp rpm-4.10.2-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm --showrc | grep rpmlib
> Features supported by rpmlib:
>     rpmlib(BuiltinLuaScripts) = 4.2.2-1
>     rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) = 3.0.4-1
>     rpmlib(ConcurrentAccess) = 4.1-1
>     rpmlib(ExplicitPackageProvide) = 4.0-1
>     rpmlib(FileCaps) = 4.6.1-1
>     rpmlib(FileDigests) = 4.6.0-1
>     rpmlib(HeaderLoadSortsTags) = 4.0.1-1
>     rpmlib(PartialHardlinkSets) = 4.0.4-1
>     rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) = 4.0-1
>     rpmlib(PayloadIsBzip2) = 3.0.5-1
>     rpmlib(PayloadIsLzma) = 4.4.2-1
>     rpmlib(PayloadIsXz) = 5.2-1
>     rpmlib(ScriptletInterpreterArgs) = 4.0.3-1
>     rpmlib(VersionedDependencies) = 3.0.3-1
>
> which already looks better indeed; except that it does not mention X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir...

The query above doesn't do what you probably think it does:
rpmlib() dependencies are provided by the running rpm instance, and 
cannot be provided by packages. So the "-qp 
rpm-4.10.2-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm" part doesn't make sense there - it will 
output the what "rpm -qp rpm-4.10.2-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm" would output, AND 
then --showrc additionally outputs the rpmlib() provides of the running 
rpm which in case of F14 is rpm-4.8.x IIRC.

You'd need to upgrade the host rpm to that of F18 (or F17) to have it 
provide the X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir magic. And even there it actually 
doesn't show up in --showrc because its, uh, rather special.

>
> ---
> I am quite obviously missing the point here
> All I would like to achieve is to build an rpm that pretends to have the required feature - without any actual change, can anybody shed some light on how to do that ?

For your purposes it sounds like faking the thing should indeed be 
sufficient. Something like this should do the trick:

--- a/lib/rpmds.c
+++ b/lib/rpmds.c
@@ -962,6 +962,9 @@ static const struct rpmlibProvides_s 
rpmlibProvides[] = {
         (                RPMSENSE_EQUAL),
      N_("support for POSIX.1e file capabilities") },
  #endif
+    { "rpmlib(X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir)", "1",
+       (                RPMSENSE_EQUAL),
+    N_("fake X-CheckUnifiedSystemdir provide") },
      { NULL,                            NULL, 0,        NULL }
  };


...but note that this needs to be applied to the host rpm building the 
vm images. Ie apply the above to F14 src.rpm, rebuild and install on the 
F14 host.

	- Panu -