The "rpm -F" command may ignore architecture variants of packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6

Solution Verified - Updated 2024-08-07T06:04:18+00:00 -

Issue

For packages with two different architectures of the same package installed, we can only freshen the first. For example, freetype has two versions (i386 and x86_64). If we freshen the first (rpm -Fv), we get an updated i386 version. However, a subsequent command (rpm -Fv) to freshen the second architecture returns immediately (no error, return code 0). However, if we freshen both in the same command, the expected results occur.
In other words,
```
rpm -Fv freetype-2.1.9-4.i386.rpm
freetype-2.1.9-4.x86_64.rpmz
```
works, but:
```
 rpm -Fv freetype-2.1.9-4.i386.rpm rpm -Fv
freetype-2.1.9-4.x86_64.rpm 
```
may not.
When you have two architectures of the same package and do an rpm -F of two newer versions in a single command, it succeeds. However, if you do one architecture at a time (i.e. in 2 separate commands), the first will succeed but the second may fail due to the architecture being ignored and only checking the version.
An RPM package for an architecture that's not currently installed gets added by an rpm -Fvh command (in addition to the correct architecture's RPM being freshened)

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