19 Mar 2008 rpm command cheatsheet
This is a simple cheatsheet for the rpm command and can be used on systems like RedHat that uses the command
| Syntax | Description | Example(s) |
|---|---|---|
| rpm -ivh {rpm-file} | Install the package | rpm -ivh sendmail-cf-8.14.2-1.fc8.rpm rpm -ivh –test sendmail-8.14.2-1.fc8.rpm |
| rpm -Uvh {rpm-file} | Upgrade package | rpm -Uvh sendmail-cf-8.14.2-1.fc8.rpm rpm -Uvh –test sendmail-8.14.2-1.fc8.rpm |
| rpm -ev {package} | Erase/remove/ an installed package | rpm -ev sendmail |
| rpm -ev –nodeps {package} | Erase/remove/ an installed package without checking for dependencies | rpm -ev –nodeps sendmail |
| rpm -qa | Display list all installed packages | rpm -qa rpm -qa | less |
| rpm -qi {package} | Display installed information along with package version and short description | rpm -qi sendmail |
| rpm -qf {/path/to/file} | Find out what package a file belongs to i.e. find what package owns the file | rpm -qf /etc/passwd rpm -qf /bin/bash |
| rpm -qc {pacakge-name} | Display list of configuration file(s) for a package | rpm -qc httpd |
| rpm -qcf {/path/to/file} | Display list of configuration files for a command | rpm -qcf /usr/bin/locate |
| rpm -qa –last | Display list of all recently installed RPMs | rpm -qa –last rpm -qa –last | less |
| rpm -qpR {.rpm-file} rpm -qR {package} |
Find out what dependencies a rpm file has | rpm -qpR sendmail-8.14.2-1.fc8.rpm rpm -qR bash |
| rpm –test {package} | Perform Installation Tests Only | rpm -i –test rpm-2.0.11-1.i386.rpm /bin/rpm conflicts with file from rpm-2.3-1 /usr/bin/gendiff conflicts with file from rpm-2.3-1 /usr/bin/rpm2cpio conflicts with file from rpm-2.3-1 /usr/bin/rpmconvert conflicts with file from rpm-2.3-1 /usr/man/man8/rpm.8 conflicts with file from rpm-2.3-1 error: rpm-2.0.11-1.i386.rpm cannot be installed |
| rpm –replacepkgs | Install the Package Even If Already Installed. Is used to force RPM to install a package that it believes to be installed already. This option is normally used if the installed package has been damaged somehow and needs to be fixed up. |
{package} – Replace with actual package name
Tags: cheatsheet, rpm
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
26 Feb 2008 List rpm package content
To list the contents of a package just run the command
# rpm -ql packagename
Example
# rpm -ql nmap /usr/bin/nmap /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70 /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/COPYING /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/COPYING.OpenSSL /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/README /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/nmap-fingerprinting-article.txt /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/nmap.deprecated.txt /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/nmap.usage.txt /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/nmap_doc.html /usr/share/doc/nmap-3.70/nmap_manpage.html /usr/share/man/man1/nmap.1.gz /usr/share/nmap /usr/share/nmap/nmap-mac-prefixes /usr/share/nmap/nmap-os-fingerprints /usr/share/nmap/nmap-protocols /usr/share/nmap/nmap-rpc /usr/share/nmap/nmap-service-probes /usr/share/nmap/nmap-services
Tags: CentOS, Fedora, RedHat, rpm
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
30 Nov 2007 Upgrade from Fedora Core 7 to Core 8
This is the steps I took to upgrade a running Fedora Core 7 installation to Core 8 using yum from the command line. Please note that live upgrades are not recommended by the Fedora Project.
Make a list of the systems current packages for later reference:
rpm -qa --qf '%{NAME}\n' | sort | uniq > ~/new-pkgnames.txt
Make a backup of any system configuration data (as root):
tar czf ~/etc-`date +%F`.tar.gz /etc
yum clean all
Make sure the new repo files isn’t placed as .rpmnew files, perhaps by
mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo
Also make sure that all the 3rd party repos you normally use point to the repository for the new Fedora release.
Next the upgrade.
Make sure you are in runlevel 3
telinit 3
Run the following command to update the yum repo on your box:
rpm -Uhv rpm -Uvh rpm -Uvh http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-8.0.0-3.noarch.rpm
yum might complain about conflicts or requirements. That is probably because you have used non-standard repositories or installed non-standard packages manually. Try to guess which packages cause the problem (or at least is a part of the dependency chain) – uninstall them and try again. Remember to install the packages again if they are essential.
Tip: Find and review “lost” packages.
You can find orphaned packages (ie packages not in the repositories anymore) after the upgrade with the tool package-cleanup from the yum-utils package
yum install yum-utils; package-cleanup --orphansIt's often helpful to run this command before the update, too. For packages with a failing "%postun" script the old package will remain partly installed. Remove it with rpm -e package-name-and-version
If you forget to remove the avahi package it will refuse to be removed from the system with a error message "error: %postun(avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 1". I haven't looked up this error message any further.
I had to clean yum to make it aware of the recent package change, this might not be necessary.
yum clean all yum upgrade
Ensure that all (new) essential packages from the new version is installed with
yum groupupdate Base
You might want to update other groups too, see
yum grouplist
The system had to upgrade 937 packages before fedora Core 7 is a fedora Core 8 installation.
After the upgrade has finished a reboot is required and it was time to check for orphaned packages
package-cleanup --orphans
The command for removing these packages is described earlier.
Source: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f8/en_US/sn-upgrade-tree.html, http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/133/upgrading-from-fedora-7-to-fedora-8-with-yum/ and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq
Tags: Core 7, Core 8, Fedora, rpm, upgrade, yum
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
26 Nov 2007 Query RPM database/packages and list their architecture
If you use the –queryformat argument with rpm it is possible to query RPMs for different architectures installed
# rpm -qa --queryformat %{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{ARCH}\\n | grep dbus-glib | sort
Result
dbus-glib-0.22-12.EL.5-i386
dbus-glib-0.22-12.EL.5-x86_64
This can also be used in one of my previous posts: Remove duplicate packages when querying the rpm database.
Tags: Fedora, RedHat, rpm, sort
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
23 Nov 2007 Remove duplicate packages when querying the rpm database
Today I had to solve a RPM problem on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS release 4 (Nahant Update 6) system (RHEL4) where there were duplicate packages when querying the rpm database. This had happened after an upgrade to update 6 using up2date from the command line.
It seemed like i386 and x64 packages had gotten installed on some packages and this caused some problems, like logon authentication and execution of some programs.
Trying to remove a duplicate rpm package
# rpm -e libtool-libs-1.5.6-4.El4.2
gave the error message
error: "libtool-libs-1.5.6-4.El4.2" specifies multiple packages
After searching the Red Hat knowledge base I located article Why do I see duplicate packages when querying the rpm database? where it says it is necessary to specify the architecture of the package to remove.
# rpm -qa --queryformat %{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{ARCH}\\n
If you add %{RELEASE} you can also determine if the package is from other package vendors like RPMForge.
Since this was a x64 system, I wanted to remove the i386 version
# rpm -e libtool-libs-1.5.6-4.El4.2.i386
This had to be done with every duplicate package on the system.
Locate the i386 packages that interfered with the x64 packages can be done using the command
rpm -qa | sort | uniq -d
These packages have dependencies so you have to add these manually, really fun job to do.
Edit:
In RHEL5 you can use yum to remove packages in a easy way
yum remove <package>.i386 yum remove <package>.x86_64
Tags: RedHat, RHEL4, rhel5, rpm, up2date
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
