RPM Lament

[Brian Densmore]

Or Help my RPM has fallen and it can't get up!
Linux needs a serious installation tool update!

Maybe some one out tere has a clue on this one. I'd like to know.

I recently upgraded to KDE 2. It's nice, so I figured I'd try Gnome's newest 
version. But, it needed some newer packages, so I pulled them down.
Oops, one of the packages requires RPM version 4. No problem, pulled down 
version 4. Hmm, it seems to be packaged in version 4! No problem, I pulled 
down the source code and compiled. No, it needs more packages to compile. No 
problem, pulled down the new glibc-2.2.5. No, it relys on files in RPM 
version 4 to install. No problem, I'm installing version 4, force the install.
That was my first mistake!
Now my graphical rpm frontends are broken. Well, let's try something 
different. I'm running RPM 3.0.4, so pull down 3.0.6. Install, no it needs 
more files. OK FINNNNE, pull them down. Install.
That was my second mistake!
Now RPM really's messed up. The RPM database, don't know what's going on. I 
got glibc-2.2.5 installed, except that it's really not.
So uninstall glibc-2.2.5. THIS IS REALLY BAD, don't try this at home. 
That was my THIRD MISTAKE. No more KDE, no more X, no more GUI.
OK no problem, reinstall and use the upgrade option. Well that worked, sort 
of. Now I am back to a GUI, but after having installed glibc-2.1.3 it still 
doesn't think it is installed. So I can't install any new version of RPM.

Any suggestions? Remember my goal here was to install Gnome 2!

I'm thinking of wiping the system and reinstalling, but I really hate to lose 
all that configuration on a server.

Thanks,
Brian