[R] What is an rpm

[Faheem Mitha]

Dear Colin

Try man rpm if you have rpm installed. Also, there is extensive
information on the rpm home page, http://www.rpm.org which includes a link
to a downloadable free book called "Maximum rpm" ( 1997), which is now
rather out of date, but still useful. You can install rpms on your system
even if it is not rpm-based, I believe, but you do need the rpm program
(rpm stands for Redhat Package Manager). Type rpm at your prompt and see
what you get.

To install an rpm you go

$ rpm -Uvh something.rpm

which is good, since -U stands for upgrades and makes backups of changed
config files of the current package. vh just prints hash marks as the
package is installed, I think. (But check this command is correct before
using it. I just did so and it looks OK).

There are other programs which will provide an interface for doing this,
including Yast (on SuSE) and kpackage (if you have KDE installed), and
xrpm. I use Yast myself.

rpm is cool because among other things it makes installing, removing and
upgrading software clean and simple. It has other advantages too.

                                                Faheem.

On Mon, 22 May 2000, Colin Knowles wrote:

> Forgive my ignorance, but I have not met an .rpm file before.
> 
> How do I unpack it?
> 
> Colin

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