Oleg <oleg@tw304h3.cpmc.columbia.edu> [2002-08-20 10:58:08 -0400]: > On Tuesday 20 August 2002 05:06 am, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 11:16:21PM -0400, Oleg wrote: > > > Trying to use "alien" hasn't quite worked for me, so I'm trying to > > > install a few RPM packages using rpm that is part of Woody. But, when > > > initializing the database "rpm --initdb", I get the following error: > > > > > > error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - No such file or directory I could tell you how to fix that. But I agree with Karl who said: > > Whoa! Please don't do that. I agree. And besides you said: > They are all supposed to go to /opt/intel (it's their C++ compiler), so no > worries. I just went through the process of installing the Intel compiler for ia64 on a box here. They also have ia32 code too which installs the same so this applies either way. Are you trying to install one of those two? If so then I can walk you through the install process. > > Instead: how didn't alien "quite work" for you? Error messages, etc? > > Yes, a ton of error messages when converting. After I installed the > RPMs that did get converted (such as the compiler itself), the > program did not work. I did not have any trouble converting the Intel C++ compiler rpms to debs. BUT! and it is a big 'but' the package is not a good rpm package installation. Therefore there are problems. Alien can't fix a bad rpm and they have a bad set of rpms. They work around that by having the script wrapper do fixup ourside of the rpm. While someone may claim as long as it works it should be fine I disagree since their methodology is unique and troublesome. To be quite blunt they don't seem to understand package management in general and rpm in particular. They place a shell script wrapper around the rpm installation. The wrapper asks you questions and then installs different rpms depending upon your answers and machine architecture. Well enough so far. Then after the rpm installation they modify several of the installed files in place to set the install prefix in the compiler scripts. This is done in the wrapper outside of rpm. They don't seem to know about postinstall scripts. This guarentees that the package cannot pass a verify after installation. Also they include the same uninstall script in every module and therefore there is a file conflict on the second module installed. rpm allows file conflicts if they are truly identical in all ways. But that is still considered a bad thing to do. dpkg does not allow it at all and this will be a fatal file conflict at install time. I took the easy way out and install the files in /opt/intel manually. It is not difficult. If that is what you are needing then I will post the details. Bob
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