Force reinstallation of packages Was: [CentOS] Root-filesystem remounts as read-only during 5.2 upgrade (system completely shoot)

Fri Jul 4 02:00:21 UTC 2008
Dag Wieers <dag at centos.org>

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Bernhard Gschaider wrote:

>>>>>> On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:53:16 +0200
>>>>>> "BG" == Bernhard Gschaider <bgschaid_lists at ice-sf.at> wrote:
>
>>>>>> On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:39:22 -0400
>>>>>> "WLM" == William L Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com> wrote:
>
>    WLM> On Wed, 2008-06-25 at 20:27 +0200, Bernhard Gschaider wrote:
>    >>> <snip>
>
>    >>> Is there a way to say: "Hey RPM, have a look whether really
>    >>> the files in your database are on the disk)" ?
>
>    WLM> Use rpm's verify option. I forget the exact syntax: I'm sorry
>    WLM> to have to sentence you to the rpm manpage dungeon. :-(
>
> Sorry. Stupid question again: and if I find inconsistencies, then the
> only way to force rpm to correct them yould be something like
>
> yum remove offendingPackage
> yum install offendingPackage
>
> or the equivalent rpm-commands?

With apt-rpm you have the possibility to replace a package inline from a 
repository, you can do this with:

 	apt-get install --reinstall <package-name>

This is useful if you damaged files that belonged to an installed RPM 
package without having to uninstall all the packages that depend on it as 
well.

Under the hood it is the same as:

 	rpm -Uhv --replacefiles --replacepkgs <file-name>

The --reinstall feature is also useful when during CentOS QA packages are 
being updated with the exact same version-release. Or when you want to 
convert a RHEL into a CentOS or the other way around.

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]