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:

rpm -qa --last

or

rpm -qa -last

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 )