Forcing RPM to reinstall broken packages

[David Richter]

On Monday 14 April 2003 03:42 pm, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
>  I had thought that RPM verified a package's checksum before installing it,
> but I can't find documentation to back that up, and don't have time to look
> further, right now.
 
I'm not sure about 'checksum" but RPM does not verify 'checksig' before 
installing. It will attempt to install. Recently I had issues with 
RHN/up2date faulting because the GPG was not valid on files ... actually this 
happens more than not. I have gone so far as to disable the 'verify GPG 
integrity' option in 'up2date-config' and snagged files bypassing the check 
that 'up2date' _does_ perform. The 'check_bypassed' files are checked via the 
command line and do indeed fail 'rpm -K'. I tried installing one file that 
failed and RPM attempted to install it. It failed to install (probably my 
luck too) but never screamed at me that it was a bad GPG.

I get around the whole mess by snagging files, that do pass a command line 
check, from ftp mirror sites of Red Hat. What has me stumped though is why I 
get so many bad GPG files through RHN/up2date.

David Richter