system reboot running alien

[Philip Pinkerton <linuxbrasil@superig.com.br>]

Seem my system want to reboot when ever I run alien against this rpm:

System Info:
Linux version 2.6.7
(gcc version 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-2))
Memory: 385260k/392960k available (2750k kernel code, 6928k reserved, 
570k data, 148k init, 0k
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1700MHz stepping 0a
ReiserFS: hda1: journal params: device hda1, size 8192, journal first 
block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max 
trans age 30  ... more on request.


This problem is consistant and can be reproduced in multi(kdm) or single 
user mode.

I am trying to caputre some data while reproducing this problem but no 
luck so far.

I don't think "alien" itself is the problem but contributes to be the 
cause when running:

alien -d -v  sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm

this runs for several minutes creating the necessary directories. lots 
of output (no-errors)...


LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{SUMMARY} sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{POSTIN} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{NAME} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{POSTUN} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{PREUN} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{RELEASE} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{PREFIXES} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{CHANGELOGTEXT} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{COPYRIGHT} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{DESCRIPTION} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{ARCH} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{VERSION} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qp --queryformat %{PREIN} 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qcp sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       rpm -qpi sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       LANG=C rpm -qpl sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm
       mkdir sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40
       chmod 755 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40
       rpm2cpio sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40-2.i386.rpm | (cd 
sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40; cpio --extract --make-directories 
--no-absolute-filenames --preserve-modification-time) 2>&

find sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40 -type d -perm 700 -print0 | xargs 
--no-run-if-empty -0 chmod 700

...... SNIP (lots more output no errors)
       chown 0:0 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/cofiles
       chmod 775 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/cofiles
       chown 0:0 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/data
       chmod 775 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/data
       chown 0:0 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/etc
       chmod 775 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/etc
       chown 0:0 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/log
       chmod 775 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/log
       chown 0:0 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/sapnames
       chmod 775 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/sapnames
       chown 0:0 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/tmp
       chmod 775 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40//usr/sap/trans/tmp
       mkdir sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40/debian

.... SNIP
       822-date
       822-date
       chmod 755 sapj2ee-srv-sapdb-6.40/debian/rules
       debian/rules binary 2>&1

After some time this is the point where the system reboots.

The remaining deb file is very small compared to the rpm. Since the 
directory still exists I am sure the process is far from  completion 
when the system reboots.

I ran sar during this process and I am still looking at the data to try 
to make sense of it all.

Philip