A cross-pointing "dependency" is preventing an upgrade of a package

Summary
How do I install a pair of packages if A requires B and B requires A?

Symptom
When attempting to install an update thus:

    # rpm -Uvh glibc-2.2.4-19.3.i386.rpm

... I get the error message:

    glibc > 2.2.2 conflicts with glibc-common-2.2.2-10

(more detail of the origianl provoking question below ...)

Diagnosis
The examples in the rpm man page do not stress the fact that you may properly have multiple packages as arguments to an "rpm -Uvh" command

Solution
Run the command this way:

    # rpm -Uvh glibc-common-2.2.2-19.3.i386.rpm \
       glibc-2.2.4-19.3.i386.rpm

(where the backslash character ("\") is the conventional Unix method for typing a long command on successive physical lines on the screen).

Discussion
The more general problem, how do I figure a dependency? The short answer is:

Install the rpmdb-redhat package.
Use "rpm --redhatprovides token" to determine the package name. -- This can be complicated somewhat by so-called file dependencies.
Locate the package, either from the install media, or an authoritative site, and install the collection all at once.

Revision History
rev RPH 020129 - added JBJ comment and Discussion
initial RPH 020129

The 'more detail' as the question was initially phrased was:

Hi
I have a problem for upgrading glibc 2.2.2-10 to 2.2.4-19.3.

I think I have to upgrade glibc-common first. For this reason
I execute this command : rpm -Fvh glibc-common-2.2.4-19.3

I have got following error :
>> glibc > 2.2.2 conflicts with glibc-common-2.2.2-10

When I execute this command : rpm -Fvh glibc-2.2.4-19.3

then I will get this error :
>> glibc-common=2.2.4-19.3 is needed by glibc-2.2.4-19.3

Last updated: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 12:02:21 -0500