Thursday, July 17, 2008



RPM - The Redhat Package Manager

Article Contributed by TLDP
(For being a Hacker you should know how to work on Linux)

The Redhat Package Manager or ``RPM'' for short is a common way to distribute
precompiled binaries as well as source code, used in a few popular distributions like
Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake. The binaries are in the form of `*.rpm' files which may be
simply called rpm's.
These are manipulated by the rpm command with relevant options, some of which are
listed below.

Installing
usage: rpm -ivh Package_name
This is used to install a new rpm (package) on the system.

Uninstalling
Usage: rpm -e
Package_name
This is used to erase, ie, uninstall existing packages on the system.

Upgrading
Usage : rpm -Uvh
Package_name
This is used to upgrade an existing package or to install it if it does not already
exist.

Note: On distributions which use RPM such as Redhat and SuSE, the installer itself is
capable of taking care of dependencies. Thus when installing Linux for the first time,
in custom mode, the user can just specify what packages are needed. The installer
scripts will automatically include packages to satisfy any dependencies and prompt the

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