Hi.

Thanks, that does work - i was going to swear i had tried it. I do the check for both file existing and not being a symlink.

Maybe it would be useful to add the --force option, i'll submit a request to see.

Thanks again, Ricardo

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Rex Dieter rdieter@math.unl.edu wrote:

On 03/26/2012 08:05 AM, Ricardo Rocha wrote:

...

(resending after subscribing to the list)

Hi all.

The lcgdm packages are using alternatives, as several flavors are provided - mysql, postgresql, ... backends.

While trying to provide an upgrade path to some of our users taking legacy packages - as in from other repositories, not fedora - by using obsoletes/provides i've bumped into an issue with the upgrade of the init scripts. The old packages are not using alternatives, so the init.d script is an actual file, not a symlink. While upgrading to the new fedora package (which would obsolete/provide the old ones), the old init.d script is left there, as it's a real file. This breaks the service as the daemon binaries are now (as they should) in /usr/sbin - they used to go in /usr/bin.

Debian seems to provide an option for these cases: # man update-alternatives """ If some real file is installed where an alternative link has to be installed, it is kept unless --force is used. """

but i can't find anything similar in Fedora. Is there a solution other than documenting that people should remove the old package and install the new one in two steps?

Why not just test if the target is a symlink or not prior to the update-alternatives call (and remove or rename it as you see fit, so it no longer would interfere)?

-- rex

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