RPM

Common RPM Tasks

Below are the common tasks I do with RPM.

List installed packages

# rpm -qa

Format output using --queryformat.

# rpm -qa --queryformat="%{name}\n"

Look for a specific package by name

# rpm -qi <package name>

Determine the origin of a file

# rpm -qf <path to file>

eg:

# rpm -qf /etc/hosts
setup-2.8.14-10.el6.noarch

Extracting a rpm package

Go into a directory and extract it using cpio. This will dump the files in the current directory, so make a directory to avoid having your files clobbered.

# mkdir package && cd package
# rpm2cpio ~/custom-package.rpm | cpio -idmv

Viewing / Editing rpm package scripts

Use the rpmrebuild utility to generate a .spec file from an existing RPM package. The spec file that gets generated will contain any scripts that may be bundled with rpm which you can modify.

# rpmrebuild -e -p some-package.rpm
## This should open your editor with the .spec file that was generated.
## Save and quit when done to have the option to rebuild the rpm.

Remove a package with a broken uninstall script

# rpm -e --noscripts <package>

Building RPM

RPMs are built using a .spec specification file.

Some directives to note:

Summary defines what the package is for
Description describes what the package does.
prep section unpacks source and applies patches
build section builds any source code. The make command usually uses DESTDIR=%{buildroot}.
install section uses the buildroot macro (%{buildroot} to generate a temporary buildroot location.
files section defines all files to be included. Files can be marked as 'config', 'doc', or 'license'. Configs and docs labeld as such can be displayed using rpm -qc or rpm -qd respectively. License files are placed in /usr/share/licenses.

The Buildroot directory is like a chroot environment of the target system.

Generating a Spec File

A specification file can be generated using the rpmdev-newspec command.

# rpmdev-newspec new-package

Creating 32bit Dependency

In your RPM.spec file, have the following in your Requires line:

Requires: nss-pam-ldapd(x86-32)

Not:

Requires: nss-pam-ldapd.i686

Checking for Install/Upgrade/Remove in Install Scripts

To check whether a .rpm file is being installed, upgraded, or removed in the pre/post install scripts, check $1 against the table below:

$1 =	0	1	2
%pre		Install	Upgrade
%post		Install	Upgrade
%preun	Uninstall	Upgrade
%postun	Uninstall	Upgrade

Example usage:

%pre

if [ $1 -eq 1 ] ; then
  # Initial install
fi

Useful Flags

When packaging .jar files, the .spec file should contain:

%define debug_package %{nil}
%define __jar_repack 0

Binary stripping is done by rpmbuild automatically. To prevent this, add:

%define __os_install_post %{nil}

Building

Use the rpmbuild command to build a RPM file using an existing .spec file.

The default topdir directory is ~/rpmbuild. This can be changed by passing in --define "_topdir `pwd`".

Packages are then signed using the rpmsign command. For example, rpmsign --addsign something.rpm.

Troubleshooting

Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.

If you ever get the error:

Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.

... it probably means that you ran rpm. To fix this warning, clear yum's cache and force a rebuild by running:

# yum clean all
# yum makecache

RPM