[mythtv-users] OT: Upgrade to Mysql 5.0

[Douglas Wagner]

Technically, Sam, you're right.  There's no question that --force is a true
"hack" to getting this package installed.

However, in this case, i'm not sure of the real damage that he's going to
encounter.  MySQL is, for all intents and purposes a pretty standalone
package.  It's a low level package that things ABOVE it might rely on (tho
not a whole lot is compiled with database support requiring a mysql
library.  PHP, Apache might be exceptions but those are about the only two
"normal" packages I can think of, and at least apache could be corrected by
turning off the mysql support or upgrading it's shared object to one that
supports MySQL 5).

Given that the RPM is not providing things like broad and general libraries
it's probably pretty safe to have --forced this installation.  This isn't
GCC, GLIB or XWindows, it's, for all intents and purposes, a standalone
package.  In the installation you can de-select this package without
encurring almost any dependency problems at all.

Also, given the backward compatibility that the MySQL crew is pretty good at
implimenting, there's probably not a whole lot of failures R.G. is going to
be experiencing, at worst my gut feeling says he might have some problems
compiling new packages in the future that rely upon database support, but
that too assumes that MySQL 5 broke something major in 4.x as most things
are now compiling against 4.x since it's what shipped with FC4.

The bottom line is, while I would have to agree with you from a system
stabiltiy point of view that --force can be an EVIL thing, there are some
packages where --force isn't nearly as bad as others.  Don't take this as me
endorcing the use of --force, and i'm certainly not gaurenteeing that
R.G.'ssystem will be stable or that what he did won't cause problems,
but again,
my gut feeling as a SysAdmin says it's probably ok for this time around.

And honestly if RedHat would get an appointment with it's proctologist at
some point soon and stop cross linking every RPM in it's distribution with
every other RPM in it's distribution this might not have been such a big
deal to begin with.

Quote
-------------------
Then you can't do it.  It's just that simple.
-------------------
Poppycock, if it's installable it should be uninstallable, at minimum
upgradeable.  Package management shouldn't be rocketscience.

Again, --force is rarely, if ever, the right way of going about it.  We all
understand that, but if you know what you're doing --force isn't the
complete destruction to the system you're eluding to either.  And so long as
you know what you've installed, typically you can always --force the
original package installation as well to bring your system back to stable if
there are major problems...tho that isn't always a fix for it either.

--Douglas Wagner

On 5/1/06, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
>
> R. G. Newbury writes:
>
> > Douglas Wagner wrote:
> >> You've got 3 options:
> >>
> >> 1) Remove MySQL 4.1 (i'm guessing you're on a RedHat distribution given
> >> the file places, could be wrong).  You can use RPM directly to try to
> >> uninstall MySQL and all it's dependent packages or you can try going
> >> into xwindows and to the package manager there (add-remove programs if
> >> you're in a recent version of gnome) and remove MySQL from there.
> >
> > Problem with this route, is that it screams the parts of mysql are
> > needed by the other packages: that is, the dependencies go both ways.
>
> Then you can't do it.  It's just that simple.
>
> > Unfortunately mysql is not, to my knowledge, available through yum. I
> > got the upgrade to work however, by using 'rpm --force -U MySQL'.
>
> WRONG!
>
> Never use --force, unless it's just a temporary workaround for a known,
> and
> fully understood packaging error, which will quickly be rectified by an
> upgrade to a later package release, which will not use --force.
>
> Your updated mysql package will probably fail in some subtle way at some
> point, or, worse yet, continue to work but give incorrect results.  Or,
> other software that has an explicit dependency on your older version of
> MySQL will malfunction or lose stability, in some way.
>
> --force is not a "fix", for a dependency issue.  It's a workaround for a
> known packaging bug.
>
> You do not have any packaging bugs.  Your package is fine, it's just not
> compatible with the rest of the software that you have installed.  And
> using
> --force is not going to fix it.
>
> Using --force is equivalent to sticking your head into a pile of sand, and
> hope that this will fix all your problems.
>
>
>
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