Topics: AIX, Installation, System Admin

How to update the AIX-rpm virtual package

AIX-rpm is a "virtual" package which reflects what has been installed on the system by installp. It is created by the /usr/sbin/updtvpkg script when the rpm.rte is installed, and can be run anytime the administrator chooses (usually after installing something with installp that is required to satisfy some dependency by an RPM package).

Since AIX-rpm has to have some sort of version number, it simply reflects the level of bos.rte on the system where /usr/sbin/updtvpkg is being run. It's just informational - nothing should be checking the level of AIX-rpm.

AIX doesn't just automatically run /usr/sbin/updtvpkg every time that something gets installed or deinstalled because on some slower systems with lots of software installed, /usr/sbin/updtvpkg can take a LONG time.

If you want to run the command manually:

# /usr/sbin/updtvpkg
If you get an error similar to "cannot read header at 20760 for lookup" when running updtvpkg, run a rpm rebuilddb:
# rpm --rebuilddb
Once you run updtvpkg, you can run a rpm -qa to see your new AIX-rpm package.



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