RPM fails to uninstall using sudo rpm -e

Question

I have encountered a strange and annoying problem when trying to uninstall certain in-house generated rpm packages using sudo. When I do the following:

sudo rpm -e mypackage  
rpm -qa | grep mypackage

I find that the package is still listed! This is despite rpm -e running without any obvious errors. This then prevents me from removing other packages which this package depends on.

After some investigation I've discovered that the package includes a post uninstall script-let which seems to fail. The script-let simply tries to remove a directory, e.g.

rm -rf /some_directory

I then discovered that by bypassing this script the package will uninstall. So if I do:

sudo rpm -e --noscripts mypackage  
rpm -qa | grep mypackage

then the package is no longer listed. Now my question is why should using sudo prevent such a simple script from running, and secondly why does the rpm command not report a problem?

BTW, the following command sequence also works, so removing the directory is surely possible:

sudo rm -rf /some_directory  
sudo rpm -e mypackage  
rpm -qa | grep mypackage

Neither of these is really an acceptable solution as I need a reliable generic way of properly uninstalling rpm packages that are not under my control. It's also not possible for me to do this as root because I'm writing a script that other users must be able to run.

Finally in desperation I tried the -H option of sudo, i.e.

sudo -H rpm -e mypackage

Now this also seems to work, but can anybody explain why setting $HOME to /root could make any difference? Due to strict processes in my work environment I cannot really submit this as a solution without a convincing argument, i.e. I must be able to explain why -H is needed and prove that my script is robust. Just saying sudo -H seems to work on my machine is not going to cut it with my boss unfortunately!

I'm hoping that some expert on here can explain what is going on, and any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

I've now discovered the explanation myself, but it might be helpful to others in the future. I found a file called .rpmmacros in my home area which was not present in the home area of root. Hence the impact of setting -H when calling sudo.

This .rpmmacros file set %_topdir to a directory that was not mounted (actually a clearcase vob). Mounting the directory or deleting the file then solved my problem, i.e. I was then able to uninstall the RPM without the -H option.