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RPM cheat sheet
RPM is a powerful package mnager available on Red Hat, Suse and Fedora Linux. It can be used to build, install, query, verify, update, and remove/erase individual software packages.
Syntax
Here is a syntax of some common RPM commands I find useful. Some of them can only be run from a root user.
| Description | Syntax |
|---|---|
| Install package | rpm -i rpm-file |
| Install verbose with a progress bar | rpm -ivh rpm-file |
| Extra verbose installation | rpm -ivvh rpm-file |
| Uninstall | rpm -e package-name |
| Uninstall verbose | rpm -ev package-name |
| Uninstall with extra verbose | rpm -evv package-name |
| Upgrade | rpm -Uvh rpm-file |
| List installed packages | rpm -qa |
| List files in an rpm | rpm -qpl rpm-file |
| List files for an installed package | rpm -ql package-name |
| List documentation/man pages for package | rpm -qd package-name |
| rpm-file — Replace with actual rpm file package-name — Replace with actual package name | |
Miscellaneous flags
| Getting help | rpm --help |
| Verbose mode | -v |
| Debug/Extra-verbose mode | -vv |
| Progress bar with hash marks | -h |
Examples
| Description | Example(s) |
|---|---|
| Install the package foo | rpm -ivh foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm |
| Upgrade foo package | rpm -Uvh foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm |
| Remove the installed foo package | rpm -ev foo |
| Remove installed foo package without checking for dependencies | rpm -ev --nodeps foo |
| List all installed packages | rpm -qa |
| Display information, version and short description for installed foo package | rpm -qi foo |
| Find which package a file belongs to | rpm -qf /usr/bin/foo rpm -qf /usr/lib/foor.bar |
| Display list of configuration file(s) for foo package | rpm -qc foo |
| Display list of configuration files for the foo.bin command | rpm -qcf /usr/bin/foo.bin |
| Display list of all recently installed RPMs | rpm -qa --last |
| Find dependencies the foo RPM file has | rpm -qpR foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm rpm -qR foo |
| Verify all RPM packages | rpm -Va |