[tbox-l] bug in webmin rpm

[Jørn A. <Jor...@nt...>]

It is a bug in webmin, making it impossible to uninstall once installed:

root@f01n02:/# rpm -vv -e webmin
D: opening database mode 0x402 in /opt/freeware/packages
+ [ 0 = 0 ]
+ grep root=/opt/freeware/libexec/webmin /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf
+ 1> /dev/null 2>& 1
+ [ 0 = 0 ]
+ /etc/rc.d/init.d/webmin stop
+ 1> /dev/null 2>& 1
execution of webmin-1.150-1 script failed, exit status 1

This is due to a bug in /etc/webmin/stop:

root@f01n02:/# /etc/webmin/stop
Stopping Webmin server in /opt/freeware/libexec/webmin
cat: 0652-050 Cannot open /var/webmin/miniserv.pid.
/etc/webmin/stop[4]: kill: 0403-008 The number of parameters specified is not correct.

RPM will refuse to delete because of this script exiting with a
non-zero exit code. It is not possible to force deletion with
``rpm --force -e''.

Two workarounds:

  1. Start the webmin server and then delete everything with rpm -e webmin

  2. Change the last line in /etc/webmin/stop from
     kill `cat $pidfile`
     to
     if [ -s $pidfile ]; then kill `cat $pidfile`; fi

     Then run rpm -e webmin

Webmin 1.150 is released 2004-06-03. This problem is due to the webmin
setup script:

[webmin-1.150/setup.sh]
...
echo "#!/bin/sh" >>$config_dir/stop
echo "echo Stopping Webmin server in $wadir" >>$config_dir/stop
echo "pidfile=\`grep \"^pidfile=\" $config_dir/miniserv.conf | sed -e 's/pidfile
=//g'\`" >>$config_dir/stop
echo "kill \`cat \$pidfile\`" >>$config_dir/stop

Interestingly, this bug is also present in webmin 1.480 of 2009-06-11.

BTW, /etc/webmin/stop is not listed in the spec file files section. It
should be,

root@f01n02:/# rpm -qf /etc/webmin/stop
file /etc/webmin/stop is not owned by any package

Best Regards --Jørn Amundsen