rpm2html/rpmfind FAQ

The package seems corrupted, the MD5 sum indicated on the page is not the same as the downloaded package one:
That's normal, the MD5 sum printed on the page is the checksum of the RPM internal data payload, not the MD5 of the package file. When installing or testing a package the rpm command will check this MD5 to be sure there is no corruption of the payload. You should not need to do such a check.

NOTE: the mechanism to build trust into a package is not at the MD5 level, it is based on digital signature, if you want to be confident into a downloaded package you shoul only use packages digitally signed with a key from someone you trust like your distribution, use rpm --checksig packagename to do such a check.
How can I upgrade to rpm v4 all rpm v4 packages are not readable by my installed rpm command
Use rpm-3.05 or rpm-3.06 as an intermediate step, it can read both rpm v3 and v4

Don't forget to run rpm --rebuilddb immediately after upgrading to v4
rpmfind-1.2 get signal 11 errors
this seems to happen a lot lately, possibly after the upgrade of the rpm setup. The most generic solution is to refetch the latest src.rpm (>= 1.6), and rebuild it locally with

rpm --rebuild rpmfind-1.6.src.rpm

if everything goes well it will generate an binary rpm that you can install. Make sure you have rpm and rpm-devel packages installed as well as libxml and libxml-devel recent ones (>= 1.8.7).

NOTE: I do not answer to bug reports concerning 1.2 anymore, this is definitely too old !
Rpmfind fails with an Invalid PASV message when fetching an FTP package
known issue, it seems the FTP implementation of libxml is not perfect nor complete, if your rpmfind relies on the libxml shared library it's a good idea to update libxml and try again.

Version >= 1.8.9 and 2.1.2 of libxml should fix this problem, get them there

If this still fails and you have minimal development skills, download the nanoftp.c module from the HEAD of CVS and compile it locally (you will need libxml-devel or libxml2-devel installed):

gcc -o nanoftp -I/usr/include/gnome-xml -I/usr/include/libxml -DTESTING nanoftp.c -lxml

and send me back the result (should be verbose) of running

nanoftp ftp://theserver/theresourcefailingtoload
Rpmfind/Rpm2html doesn't work on my installation failing to open the package database
the RPM database format may have changed, you may need to recompile or fetch a more recent package for rpmfind/rpm2html/rpm

Easiest is to fetch a recent src.rpm, make sure that libxml, libxml-devel are installed an matches, as well as rpm and rpm-devel (and possibly popt), then launch the following (possibly as root):

rpm --rebuild rpmfind-xxx.rpm.src

if everything works okay this will build an rpm specific to your setup, just install this one.
I get the error rpmfind: error in loading shared libraries: rpmfind: undefined symbol: xmlIsBlankNode
Upgrade your libxml RPM with a recent version >= 1.8.8

ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/
How can I tune rpmfind to avoid getting package from distribution XXX ? How can I force packages to come from distribution YYY ?
Change your $HOME/.rpmfind to adjust the rating for the distribution. Put a -1 rating for distributions you don't want packages from. To express preference toward a given distribution give a good rating (e.g. 1000) to it. You can ban distribution by using no_distrib option or try to for a distrib on the command line by using option --dist xxx
Rpmfind seems to only returns RPMs for the redhat system, I never got suggestions for other distributions
Redhat ships rpmfind witha default rpmfind config file pointing to RedHat own RDF database. This database indexes only a very limited set of distributions, mostly Redhat ones. Edit your .rpmfind (and optionally /etc/rpmfind.config) and set the following value:

server=http://rpmfind.net/linux/RDF

Rpmfind tend to suggest me glibc binaries even if I'm running a libc5 based system

Change your $HOME/.rpmfind in the section packages:

     -------------- original --------------
     ;
     ; Packages rejection criteria
     ;
     [packages]
     no_upgrade=glibc
     no_upgrade=glibc.so.*
     no_upgrade=libc
     no_upgrade=libc.so.*
     no_depend=libc.so.3
     --------------------------------------

     To 

     --------------------------------------
     ;
     ; Packages rejection criteria
     ;
     [packages]
     no_upgrade=glibc
     no_upgrade=glibc.so.*
     no_upgrade=libc
     no_upgrade=libc.so.*
     no_depend=libc.so.3

     no_upgrade=glibc.*
     no_depend=glibc.*
     no_depend=libc.so.6
     --------------------------------------

I'm getting "Increase MAX_MIRRORS=20" messages.
Update to a newer version of rpmfind
I'm behind a firewall and rpmfind doesn't work.
First check issue 1/

Then edit ~/.rpmfind and change the variables httpProxy and/or ftpProxy to give the

URL of the proxy
```
httpProxy=http://myhttpproxy:3128/
    
```
How to build a Web page that described the packages installed on a machine.
This is definitely possible, here is an example of a config file doing exactly that:
```
maint=Sysadmin
[email protected]
dir=/home/httpd/html/setup
url=/setup
tree=true

[localbase]
name=Current Setup
ftp=ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS
ftpsrc=ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.0/SRPMS
color=#ffffff
    
```
The point here is that [localbase] hard coded value force rpm2html to dump the RPM installed database instead of browsing a directory.

Note: I would recommend some care about exporting publicly the list of exported packages installed on a machine to the whole internet. While this feature is definitely useful as a system administration tool, this is a potential security hole and action should be taken to restrain accesses to the generated pages

[ FAQ co