Fedora Cosmic Atomic app installed from an .rpm file can not be upgraded

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1

Mailspring 1.17 was successfully installed from an .rpm file, but it can not be upgraded to 1.18 using an .rpm file. I have tried both “rpm-ostree override replace” and “rpm-ostree install” options. The first option proceeds without error but does not upgrade the package. The second option produced the following error:

Problem: cannot install both mailspring-1.18.0-0.1.x86_64 from @commandline and mailspring-1.17.4-0.1.x86_64 from @commandline

  • conflicting requests

dnf is not available in Cosmic Atomic. Should dnf be installed, or is there an rpm-ostree option I have not tried?

2

Hello @rpanson and welcome to :fedora: !

For further assistance, please describe exactly how you installed this package. Did you follow any instructions? If so, please provide a link to them.

EDIT: I would also suggest trying Mailspring from Flathub.

5

“Mailspring 1.17 was successfully installed from an .rpm file”. From the Cosmic terminal, I ran the .rpm file downloaded from the Mailspring website using rpm-ostree install xxx.rpm. This ran without error and Mailspring was successfully installed and fully functional. After a few days of use it started to annoy with messages about an update being available. I could ignore the messages. Mailspring is not available in Cosmic Store. Yes, I could install Mailspring from the flathub and probably should have done that from the beginning. But now I have it set up the way I want. In general I want to know how to update ANY app that was installed using rpm-ostree install xxx.rpm. Thank you for providing an installation alternative for my specific situation.

6

For further assistance, please provide the output of the rpm-ostree status command as pre-formatted text.

7

I am not a patient person. I have uninstalled the application, installed the flathub app as you suggested, and will be very wary of installing apps from .rpm packages in the future. I will mark your suggestion as a solution to my problem. Thank you. If you wish, you can address this as a general inquiry rather than as a solution to a problem:

robert@fedora:/var/home/robert$ rpm-ostree status
State: idle
Deployments:
● fedora:fedora/43/x86_64/cosmic-atomic
Version: 43.20260221.0 (2026-02-21T01:09:11Z)
BaseCommit: 2150618785d0b08a6341c8de6606103b7db45c56ee8aa5114f49be48ab05d5af
GPGSignature: Valid signature by C6E7F081CF80E13146676E88829B606631645531
LayeredPackages: akmod-nvidia akmods gvfs-mtp hplip-gui nvtop proton-vpn-cli python-envycontrol radeontop
rpmdevtools xorg-x11-drv-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda yt-dlp
LocalPackages: nomachine-enterprise-client-9.3.7-1.x86_64 protonvpn-stable-release-1.0.3-1.noarch
rpmfusion-free-release-43-1.noarch rpmfusion-nonfree-release-43-1.noarch
Initramfs: --force

fedora:fedora/43/x86_64/cosmic-atomic
Version: 43.20260221.0 (2026-02-21T01:09:11Z)
BaseCommit: 2150618785d0b08a6341c8de6606103b7db45c56ee8aa5114f49be48ab05d5af
GPGSignature: Valid signature by C6E7F081CF80E13146676E88829B606631645531
LayeredPackages: akmod-nvidia akmods gvfs-mtp hplip-gui nvtop proton-vpn-cli python-envycontrol radeontop
rpmdevtools xorg-x11-drv-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda yt-dlp
LocalPackages: mailspring-1.17.4-0.1.x86_64 nomachine-enterprise-client-9.3.7-1.x86_64
protonvpn-stable-release-1.0.3-1.noarch rpmfusion-free-release-43-1.noarch
rpmfusion-nonfree-release-43-1.noarch
Initramfs: --force

8

Generally, I would suggest using Flatpaks from Flathub, as AFAIK, this is the long-term trend for Fedora. When you install a third-party RPM as a local package or without adding an external package repository, the only way to update it is to reinstall it.

1 Like
9

I installed Mailspring as a Flatpak recently and it failed to launch properly. Immediately deleted it. Some flatpaks do not work as expected on COSMIC Atomic.