Archive for August, 2009

Apt-rpm dependency problem

Posted in Linux SysAdmin on August 12th, 2009 by Johan Huysmans – Be the first to comment

When installing some rpm’s on a CentOS5 system I encountered a dependency problem.

Apt told me that it depends on a specific file which isn’t provided by any package in the repository. After some investigation I noticed that the rpm WAS available in the repository, and that yum correctly found that package.

The problem was that the specific file needed by the package was a symlink provided by the other package. The symlink file is known by the rpm (rpm -ql /path/to/file gives the rpm) but isn’t know by apt.

Instead of running genbasedir with the location of the repository as only argument, add the –bloat argument.

genbasedir --bloat /path/to/repository

This will solve the problem!


I noticed this problem during the installation of redhat-lsb on a very minimal CentOS5 system. redhat-lsb requires 2 files (which are symlinks), these files are provided by… redhat-lsb itselve…

If you didn’t use the –bloat argument the redhat-lsb package couldn’t be installed with apt, it could be installed with yum or rpm.