[Yum] Is this a FRB, Frequently Reported Bug?

[Stephen Satchell]

I'm sorry if you have gotten this 381 times already, but on the long 
shot that no one reported this one...

As part of a debug exercise, I'm in the process of building a brand 
spanking new Red Hat 9 box from the CDs that I've been lovingly carrying 
around all these years.  My goal:  load the system, then use Yum to 
bring everything up to date.  Well...

> [root at testing src]# yum update
> Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - Base
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - updates
> Finding updated packages
> Downloading needed headers
> No Packages Available for Update
> No actions to take
> [root at testing src]# yum list kernel
> Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - Base
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - updates
> Finding updated packages
> Downloading needed headers
> Looking in Available Packages:
> Name                                Arch   Version                  Repo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   
> Looking in Installed Packages:
> Name                                Arch   Version                  Repo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> kernel                              i686   2.4.20-8                 db

The problem is that the version for the most up-to-date kernel is 
2.4.20-37.  Oops.  I guest that 8 is greater than 37 in this context.

I already know your next question!

> [root at testing src]# yum list yum
> Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - Base
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - updates
> Finding updated packages
> Downloading needed headers
> Looking in Available Packages:
> Name                                Arch   Version                  Repo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   
> Looking in Installed Packages:
> Name                                Arch   Version                  Repo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> yum                                 noarch 2.0.3-0.fdr.1.rh90       db

One good thing came out of this -- I've now been exposed to Python. 
Something new to learn every day.

I ran into something like this when I wrote an RPM package manager. 
What did I end up doing?  I took any digit string and made it ten digits 
long before making comparisons between names.  So, for example, I would 
expand the current Yum verion:

   2.0.3-0.fdr.1.rh90

to

  000000002.0000000000.0000000003-000000000.fdr.000000001.rh0000000090

(This assumes that the "rh90" wouldn't be removed in suffic analysis. 
Somehow, I suspect that the string "fdr.1.rh90" would be removed, but I 
don't know your naming standards.)

And that's one way you make sure that "8" is *not* greater than "37'.

It was easy using Perl's pattern matching.  How would I do this in 
Python?  I leave that to you Python coders.

Respectfully,
Stephen Satchell
The Man In The Box (net/sys admin)
American Internet, Inc.