RPM package read errors with Smart 1.4.1

[Keith Roberts]

On Wed, 7 Dec 2011, Steve Morris wrote:

> To: smart <smart at labix.org>
> From: Steve Morris <samorris at netspace.net.au>
> Subject: RPM package read errors with Smart 1.4.1
> 
> Hi,
>    Is anyone able to tell me what these error messages that smart 
> continually produces mean. Not only are these being displayed in the cli, but 
> I believe they are also causing problems with the gui and causing it to 
> continually hang.
>
> error: rpmpkgRead: Header: hdr blob(19728): BAD, read returned 8725 : error 
> code: 2                                                  (  0%)
> error: rpmpkgRead: Header: Header SHA1 digest: BAD 
> Expected(0dc56c4bffabdf49716ccbdfcda8fdfa9df342de) != 
> (e0b4ad997e987987d1759a84d8d38de285afc94e) : error code: 2

OK Steve. Basically each RPM package is digitally signed to 
make sure it is not corrupted accidently during downloading, 
or more maliciously by a hacker.

Smart is a front end to the distro's package manager, in 
this case it looks like RPM.

So the error code is telling you that RPM checked the 
validity of the RPM package, and it was expecting a SHA1 
checksum of:

Expected(0dc56c4bffabdf49716ccbdfcda8fdfa9df342de)

But instead it got:

(e0b4ad997e987987d1759a84d8d38de285afc94e) : error code: 2

What OS and version are you on please?

Also there was a change in the RPM packaging format, so that 
packages built with the older version of RPM would not work 
on the latest newer version of RPM.

Smart is very good, and I recently used it fix my Centos 5.6 
box with a lot of repositories that had dependency 
conflicts. It is also good to know how to use RPM from the 
command line, and not be totally reliant on Smart or other 
RPM front-ends ;)

If you have time and you wanted to learn RPM I'd recommend 
this free online work:

Maximum RPM

Copyright © 2000 Red Hat, Inc.
Taking the RPM Package Manager to the Limit

Edward C. Bailey
Red Hat, Inc.
Paul Nasrat
Matthias Saou
Ville Skyttä
1-888172-78-9

http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm-snapshot/

There is also a helpfull user mailing list for RPM found 
here:

http://www.rpm.org/wiki/Communicate

HTH

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

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