RPM has five basic modes of operation (not
counting package building): installing, uninstalling, upgrading,
querying, and verifying. This section contains an overview of each
mode. For complete details and options, try rpm
--help or refer to Section 15.5 Additional Resources for more information on
RPM.
Before using an RPM, you must know where to find them. An Internet
search returns many RPM repositories, but if you are looking for RPM
packages built by Red Hat, they can be found at the following locations:
RPM packages typically have file names like
foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm. The file name includes the
package name (foo), version
(1.0), release (1), and
architecture (i386). To install a package, log in
as root and type the following command at a shell prompt:
rpm -Uvh foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm
If installation is successful, the following output is displayed:
As you can see, RPM prints out the name of the package and then prints
a succession of hash marks as the package is installed as a progress
meter.
The signature of a package is checked automatically when installing or
upgrading a package. The signature confirms that the package was
signed by an authorized party. For example, if the verification of the
signature fails, an error message such as the following is displayed:
error: V3 DSA signature: BAD, key ID 0352860f
If it is a new, header-only, signature, an error message such as the
following is displayed:
error: Header V3 DSA signature: BAD, key ID 0352860f
If you do not have the appropriate key installed to verify the
signature, the message contains the word
NOKEY such as:
If the package of the same version is already installed, the
following is displayed:
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
package foo-1.0-1 is already installed
If the same version you are trying to install is already installed,
and you ewant to install the package anyway, you can use the
--replacepkgs option, which tells RPM to ignore
the error:
rpm -ivh --replacepkgs foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm
This option is helpful if files installed from the RPM were deleted
or if you want the original configuration files from the RPM to be
installed.
If you attempt to install a package that contains a file which has
already been installed by another package or an earlier version of
the same package, the following is displayed:
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
file /usr/bin/foo from install of foo-1.0-1 conflicts with file from package bar-2.0.20
To make RPM ignore this error, use the
--replacefiles option:
RPM packages can, essentially, depend on other packages,
which means that they require other packages to be installed to run
properly. If you try to install a package which has an unresolved
dependency, output similar to the following is displayed:
error: Failed dependencies:
bar.so.2 is needed by foo-1.0-1
Suggested resolutions:
bar-2.0.20-3.i386.rpm
If you are installing a package from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CD-ROM set, it
usually suggest the package(s) needed to resolve the
dependency. Find the suggested package(s) on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CD-ROMs or
from the Red Hat FTP site (or mirror), and add it to the command:
rpm -ivh foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm bar-2.0.20-3.i386.rpm
If installation of both packages is successful, output similar to
the following is displayed:
If it does not suggest a package to resolve the dependency, you can
try the --redhatprovides option to determine
which package contains the required file. You need the
rpmdb-redhat package installed to use this
option.
rpm -q --redhatprovides bar.so.2
If the package that contains bar.so.2 is in the
installed database from the rpmdb-redhat
package, the name of the package is displayed:
bar-2.0.20-3.i386.rpm
To force the installation anyway (which is not recommended since the
package may not run correctly), use the --nodeps
option.
Uninstalling a package is just as simple as installing one. Type the
following command at a shell prompt:
rpm -e foo
Note
Notice that we used the package namefoo, not the name of the original package
filefoo-1.0-1.i386.rpm. To uninstall a package,
replace foo with the actual package name of the
original package.
You can encounter a dependency error when uninstalling a package if
another installed package depends on the one you are trying to remove.
For example:
error: Failed dependencies:
foo is needed by (installed) bar-2.0.20-3.i386.rpm
To cause RPM to ignore this error and uninstall the package anyway,
which may break the package depending on it, use the
--nodeps option.
Upgrading a package is similar to installing one. Type the following
command at a shell prompt:
rpm -Uvh foo-2.0-1.i386.rpm
As part of upgrading a package, RPM automatically uninstalls any old
versions of the foo package. In fact, you may
want to always use -U to install packages which
works even when there are no previous versions of the package
installed.
Tip
You don't want to use the -U option for installing
kernel packages because RPM replaces the previous kernel package.
This does not affect a running system, but if the new kernel is
unable to boot during your next restart, there would be no other
kernel to boot instead.
Using the -i option adds the kernel to your GRUB
boot menu (/etc/grub.conf). Similarly,
removing an old, unneeded kernel removes the kernel from GRUB.
Because RPM performs intelligent upgrading of
packages with configuration files, you may see a message like the
following:
saving /etc/foo.conf as /etc/foo.conf.rpmsave
This message means that your changes to the configuration file may not
be forward compatible with the new
configuration file in the package, so RPM saved your original file
and installed a new one. You should investigate the differences
between the two configuration files and resolve them as soon as
possible, to ensure that your system continues to function properly.
Upgrading is really a combination of uninstalling and installing, so
during an RPM upgrade you can encounter
uninstalling and installing errors, plus one more. If
RPM thinks you are trying to upgrade to a
package with an older version number, the output
is similar to the following:
package foo-2.0-1 (which is newer than foo-1.0-1) is already installed
To force RPM to upgrade anyway, use the
--oldpackage option:
Freshening a package is similar to upgrading one. Type the following
command at a shell prompt:
rpm -Fvh foo-1.2-1.i386.rpm
RPM's freshen option checks the versions of the packages specified on
the command line against the versions of packages that have already
been installed on your system. When a newer version of an
already-installed package is processed by RPM's freshen option, it is
upgraded to the newer version. However, RPM's freshen option does not
install a package if no previously-installed package of the same name
exists. This differs from RPM's upgrade option, as an upgrade
does install packages, whether or not an older
version of the package was already installed.
RPM's freshen option works for single packages or package groups.
If you have just downloaded a large number of different packages, and
you only want to upgrade those packages that are already installed on
your system, freshening does the job. If you use freshening, you do
not have to delete any unwanted packages from the group that you
downloaded before using RPM.
In this case, issue the following command:
rpm -Fvh *.rpm
RPM automatically upgrades only those packages that are already
installed.
Use the rpm -q command to query the database of
installed packages. The rpm -q foo command
displays the package name, version, and release number of the
installed package foo:
foo-2.0-1
Note
To query a package, replace foo with the actual
package name.
Instead of specifying the package name, use the following
options with -q to specify the package(s) you want
to query. These are called Package Selection
Options.
-a queries all currently installed packages.
-f
<file>
queries the package which owns
<file>.
When specifying a file, you must specify the full path of the file
(for example, /bin/ls).
-p
<packagefile>
queries the package
<packagefile>.
There are a number of ways to specify what information to display
about queried packages. The following options are used to select the
type of information for which you are searching. These are called
Information Query Options.
-i displays package information including name,
description, release, size, build date, install date, vendor, and
other miscellaneous information.
-l displays the list of files that the package
contains.
-s displays the state of all the files in the
package.
-d displays a list of files marked as
documentation (man pages, info pages, READMEs, etc.).
-c displays a list of files marked as
configuration files. These are the files you change after
installation to adapt the package to your system (for example,
sendmail.cf, passwd,
inittab, etc.).
For the options that display lists of files, add -v
to the command to display the lists in a familiar ls
-l format.
Verifying a package compares information about files installed from a
package with the same information from the original package. Among
other things, verifying compares the size, MD5 sum, permissions, type,
owner, and group of each file.
The command rpm -V verifies a package. You can use
any of the Package Verify Options listed for
querying to specify the packages you wish to verify. A simple use of
verifying is rpm -V foo, which verifies that all
the files in the foo package are as they were when
they were originally installed. For example:
To verify a package containing a particular file:
rpm -Vf /usr/bin/vim
To verify ALL installed packages:
rpm -Va
To verify an installed package against an
RPM package file:
rpm -Vp foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm
This command can be useful if you suspect that your
RPM databases are corrupt.
If everything verified properly, there is no output. If there are any
discrepancies, they are displayed. The format of the output is a
string of eight characters (a c
denotes a configuration file) and then the file name. Each of the
eight characters denotes the result of a comparison of one attribute
of the file to the value of that attribute recorded in the RPM
database. A single period (.)
means the test passed. The following characters denote failure of
certain tests:
5 — MD5 checksum
S — file size
L — symbolic link
T — file modification time
D — device
U — user
G — group
M — mode (includes
permissions and file type)
? — unreadable file
If you see any output, use your best judgment to determine if you
should remove or reinstall the package, or fix the problem in another
way.
