The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM ) is a tool that automates the installation and uninstallation of software on a Linux system and allows you to more easily manage installed software. The rpm command works with software packaged into rpm files. You can use the rpm command with rpm files to determine what other software is required prior to installing the new software, i.e. you can see the "dependencies" of the new software. You can use the rpm command to easily obtain details on all software installed on a system that was installed via an rpm package. For instance rpm -a will show a list of all installed packages. If I was interested in only packages related to Clamav, a free antivirus scanner, I could filter the output with grep, e.g. rpm -a | grep clamav. I might then see the following on a system:
$rpm -qa | grep clamav
clamav-db-0.80-2.0.rh9.rf
clamav-0.80-2.0.rh9.rf
clamav-milter-0.80-2.0.rh9.rf
I could get details for one of those packages, clamav, with rpm -qi clamav.
If you wish to build your own RPM files, you can find information on how to do so at Dag Wieer's Red Hat Package Manager v4 webpage and at IBM's Packaging software with RPM webpage.
The RPM format is not restricted to just the Red Hat distributions of Linux, but is used on other Linux distributions as well, such as SuSE's and Caldera's distributions.
References:
- Red Hat
Package Manager v4
Dag Wieers
September 21, 2003 -
Packaging software with RPM
Dan Poirier (poirier@us.ibm.com)
Software engineer, IBM
01 Nov 2001
