12.3.2 RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX not set

On Linux, during installation of CLIM, Common SQL, LispWorks ORB or KnowledgeWorks from a secondary rpm file you may see a message similar to this:

# rpm --install tmp/lispworks-clim-6.1-1.i386.rpm

Environment variable RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX not set, setting it to /usr

LispWorks installation not found in /usr.

error: %pre(lispworks-clim-6.1-1) scriptlet failed, exit status 1

error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping lispworks-clim-6.1-1

#

This is only a problem when LispWorks itself was installed in a non-default location (that is, using the --prefix RPM option). You would then want to supply that same --prefix value when installing the secondary rpm. A bug in RPM means that a required environment variable RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX is not set automically to the supplied value. We have seen this bug in RPM version 4.2, as distributed with RedHat 8 and 9.

The workaround is to set this environment variable explicitly before installing the secondary rpm. For example, if LispWorks was installed like this:

then you would add CLIM like this (in C shell):

setenv RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX /usr/lisp

rpm --install --prefix /usr/lisp lispworks-clim-6.1-1.i386.rpm

LispWorks Release Notes and Installation Guide - 23 Dec 2011