All you have to know about RPM

by Alexandre de Abreu
Updated on Tuesday, 09-Mar-2004 05:00:36 PST

Everybody knows that Fedora and Red Hat Linux use RPM as a package management tool as well as update tools(yum, up2date, apt) use rpmlib for accessing the rpm data on the system. It's really nice when we do a "yum install XFree86-xdm" and all dependency calculations, space available are done only by answering "y" to a few questions.

But what to do when setup is not ready for using yum or other install/update tool? On the next article I'll show an easy way for yum repository building with wget and how to use it, see Hal Canary's rsync script for an example. The problems will be shown here starting from "How to install" famous rpm commands and then going to more interesting ones.

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How can I...

Problem 1: Install or Upgrade a package? Can I install an old one?
Problem 2: Remove a package? Is it going to remove any dependencies?
Problem 3: Query installed packages? What about a RPM file?
Problem 4: List what packages are required by some RPM package?
Problem 5: Find from which package the file /usr/bin/smbmount belongs?
Problem 6: List what files will be installed by a RPM package?
Problem 7: Install a package directly from Internet? Can I use a proxy?
Problem 8: Simulate what will be done when executing "rpm -ivh new-kernel.rpm"?
Problem 9: Upgrade all my installed packages with one Freshen command?
Problem 10: Figure out the Kernel version(smp, bigmem) and base arch(i386, athlon)?
Problem 11: Install a new Kernel version but keeping my old one installed?
Problem 12: Make backups of my old packages when updating or removing them?
Problem 13: Build a RPM package from a SRPM with rpmbuild?
Problem 14: Check digests and signatures against a package?
Problem 15: See what RPM macros are defined on my system?
Problem 16: Get rpm back? The command "rpm -qa" returns nothing!
Problem 17: Figure out the installation time of my packages? [User Contribution]
Problem 18: Figure out the size of a installed package? [User Contribution]