View source for Working with RPMS

== Commands of Note ==

What rpm owns a file?

 rpm -qf /path/to/file

What files are in an rpm?

 rpm -ql packagename

tell me about an rpm file ( *.rpm )

 rpm -qip software.1.2.3-5.rpm


tell me what an rpm requires:

 rpm -qR mypackage

Show in what order rpms were installed:
<pre>
rpm -qa --last
</pre>
or
<pre>
rpm -qa -last
</pre>

Is a package ok (V for verify)?

 rpm -V packagename

No output? then the rpm is intact. If you get output then it's worthwhile
checking out the man page and skipping down to: "VERIFY OPTIONS" ( /VERIFY
OPTIONS in man ).

two packages with the same name version and release? check their md5s:

 rpm -q --qf "%{NAME} %{SIGMD5}\n" perl-XML-LibXML-1.52-1

Note that rpm 4.0.X does not understand the %{SIGMD5} tag, use rpm 4.1.X or
greater (ftp1 has the old version as of this writing).

Get a list of files in an RPM including timestamps and MD5 sums

 rpm --dump -q packagename

To list rpms by size:

 rpm -q -a --qf "%-30{NAME}\t%-10{VERSION}\t%-30{size}\n" | sort -rn -k 3

To get a list of rpms with Version and Release data in separate columns (
useful for futher processing):

 rpm -q -a --qf "%-30{NAME}\t%-10{VERSION}\t%{RELEASE}\n"

What architecture is the rpm for?

 rpm -q -a --qf "%-30{NAME}\t%-10{VERSION}\t%{RELEASE}\t%{ARCH}\n"

==Making rpms==

===Prereq this OR that===
Suppose you are composing a package that could use functions from ntp or
xntp.
you can't put ntp OR xntp in the Prereqs but you can put a file shared
by both
in the prereqs. In the ntp example /usr/sbin/ntpq. ( thanks to Terry
Hurcombe
for that nugget )