update-alternatives needs verbose invalid message about chkconfig HOT 6 OPEN

To be honest I don't see how this would improve things. It looks that in your case there is something wrong with /var/lib/alternatives (it is not readable or maybe it does not exist at all). So repeating command line arguments would not help.

from chkconfig.

What you do not see is when doing package/rmp installs, I see a bunch of "admindir /var/lib/alternatives invalid" messages. I have no idea WHAT message is invalid, let alone if it is a valid message or not.

If the message is from a remove and nothing to remove, there is no reason to open a bug report.
If the message is install, then I know to open a bug report. As a system QA tester I should not have to open each invalid rpm to read post install scripts to guess which call to admindir caused the problem.

from chkconfig.

Well, it should not matter in your case, how the alternatives were called. There is something wrong with alternatives db. I think we should extend the message in a way
admindir /var/lib/alternatives invalid: "Permission denied|Does not exist|..."

from chkconfig.

I understand what you are saying. But you are missing the point I am trying to make. A rpm has a bunch of postscript admin commands which have one or more failures. There is no way to identify which had a failure. Example: take the gcc-5.4.0-5.mga6.src.rpm for example:
postinstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh):
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-5.4.0 300500
[ -e /usr/bin/gcc ] || /usr/sbin/update-alternatives --auto gcc
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc-ar gcc-ar /usr/bin/gcc-ar-5.4.0 300500
[ -e /usr/bin/gcc-ar ] || /usr/sbin/update-alternatives --auto gcc-ar
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc-nm gcc-nm /usr/bin/gcc-nm-5.4.0 300500
[ -e /usr/bin/gcc-nm ] || /usr/sbin/update-alternatives --auto gcc-nm
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc-ranlib gcc-ranlib /usr/bin/gcc-ranlib-5.4.0 300500
[ -e /usr/bin/gcc-ranlib ] || /usr/sbin/update-alternatives --auto gcc-ranlib
postuninstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh):
if [ ! -f /usr/bin/gcc-5.4.0 ]; then
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --remove gcc /usr/bin/gcc-5.4.0
fi
if [ ! -f /usr/bin/gcc-ar-5.4.0 ]; then
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --remove gcc-ar /usr/bin/gcc-ar-5.4.0
fi
if [ ! -f /usr/bin/gcc-nm-5.4.0 ]; then
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --remove gcc-nm /usr/bin/gcc-nm-5.4.0
fi
if [ ! -f /usr/bin/gcc-ranlib-5.4.0 ]; then
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --remove gcc-ranlib /usr/bin/gcc-ranlib-5.4.0
fi

If two or three fail during package install/update I have no idea which ones failed.

from chkconfig.

Hmmm, I see. My problem here is that I can't image a situation where this would fail only in certain cases. If there is something wrong with /var/lib/alternatives then basically every call of alternatives will fail, so a specific command should not matter.
Honestly, change you are requesting is totally simple, but my twisted developer brain still says that it does not make sense. If you give me a reproducer where one call will succeed and the second one will fail, I will do that. Otherwise, I am already writing a patch that will print "admindir /var/lib/alternatives is not writable" :-)

from chkconfig.

Glad to hear you are a developer. Now put your package manager hat on, and a system tester gets one or more errors installing some package. As a developer/package owner would it not make the pkg manager's life easier if the bug reporter put which update-alternatives failed.

Consider this, update-alternatives --remove xxx will return a failure and as tester, I would not bother reporting an error if xxx did not exist.

from chkconfig.