RPM

Common RPM Tasks

Below are the common tasks I do with RPM.

List installed packages

 rpm -qa

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

Remove a package with a broken uninstall script

 rpm -e --noscripts <package>

Building RPM

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 (Pre-Install)		Install	Upgrade
%post (Post-Install)		Install	Upgrade
%preun (Pre-Uninstall)	Uninstall	Upgrade
%postun (Pre-Uninstall)	Uninstall	Upgrade
%post (Post-Install)		install	upgrade

Example usage:

%pre

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

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