Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual page 42

of the old version and immediately installs the new files. The difference between the
two versions is that -U installs packages that previously did not exist in the system, but
-F merely updates previously installed packages. When updating, rpm updates confi-
guration files carefully using the following strategy:
• If a configuration file was not changed by the system administrator, rpm installs
the new version of the appropriate file. No action by the system administrator is
required.
• If a configuration file was changed by the system administrator before the update,
rpm saves the changed file with the extension .rpmorig or .rpmsave (backup
file) and installs the version from the new package (but only if the originally installed
file and the newer version are different). If this is the case, compare the backup file
(.rpmorig or .rpmsave) with the newly installed file and make your changes
again in the new file. Afterwards, be sure to delete all .rpmorig and .rpmsave
files to avoid problems with future updates.
• .rpmnew files appear if the configuration file already exists and if the noreplace
label was specified in the .spec file.
Following an update, .rpmsave and .rpmnew files should be removed after compar-
ing them, so they do not obstruct future updates. The .rpmorig extension is assigned
if the file has not previously been recognized by the RPM database.
Otherwise, .rpmsave is used. In other words, .rpmorig results from updating from
a foreign format to RPM. .rpmsave results from updating from an older RPM to a
newer RPM. .rpmnew does not disclose any information as to whether the system
administrator has made any changes to the configuration file. A list of these files is
available in /var/adm/rpmconfigcheck. Some configuration files (like /etc/
httpd/httpd.conf) are not overwritten to allow continued operation.
The -U switch is not just an equivalent to uninstalling with the -e option and installing
with the -i option. Use -U whenever possible.
To remove a package, enter rpm -e package. rpm, which only deletes the package
if there are no unresolved dependencies. It is theoretically impossible to delete Tcl/Tk,
for example, as long as another application requires it. Even in this case, RPM calls for
assistance from the database. If such a deletion is, for whatever reason, impossible
28 Administration Guide