h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I came across a funny one tonight.

a program wouldn't compile without svgalib, so I used rpm -Q svgalib, and it said it wasn't installed.

I got my cd's out, and it wouldn't install, saying it was already there, but wouldn't delete either, saying it wasn't there.

any ideas what is going on?

ps this happened using mandrake 8.2

How about you try:

rpm -qa|grep svgalib

and see what that says. It might be that the package name has some extra stuff (you only leave off the numbers at the end).

* bloke's wearing a lovely radioactive atoll for the bikini competition. Vote for me at A781184 or I'll take it off (you don't want that to happen) *

I've tried looking for the package either as svgalib or with the full package name of something like svgalib-x.y.z, and it returns the same results in both cases.

it claims to be there only when you try and install it.

I've even tried rebuilding the rpm database, and it still seems to make no difference.

How it could be doing this has frankly got me a bit stumped.

after all, hopefully the query command should be how the install command finds if it is there, so they should be using the same database.

Well, you could always use the --force option (or --nodeps for the new program)

* bloke's wearing a lovely radioactive atoll for the bikini competition. Vote for me at A781184 or I'll take it off (you don't want that to happen) *

I had completely forgotten about that option. I will try it and get back to you.

in the mean time, any ideas how it could have the error?